Archimedes Academy elementary school in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi has confirmed an incident in which a student was left in the school bus for about 30 minutes after a field trip on Thursday, and has apologized to the student’s parents.

Nguyen Thuy Hang, founder of Archimedes school system, confirmed on Friday that a six-year-old student of Archimedes Academy, a unit of the system in Cau Giay District, was neglected in a school bus a day earlier, VTC News reported.

On Thursday morning, the school conducted a summer camp in Bat Trang Commune of Hanoi's Gia Lam District, for 20 first graders along with five teachers and support staff, and all of them were taken there in a shuttle bus of the school.

At 12:10 pm that day, the vehicle took all the trip’s attendants back to the school, and teachers in charge did not count the number of students who got off the bus.

About 12:30 pm, when all the returned students got together for lunch, teachers in charge of the trip found one student missing and reported the finding to the bus driver, who had left the school, as well as the parents of the missing student.

Ten minutes later, the school was informed by the driver and parents that the student was sleeping in the bus. 

The driver then immediately drove the student back to school and arrived at 12:45 pm, according to the school’s Facebook page.

It turned out that the student had been sleeping in the bus without detection when the vehicle returned to the school after the field trip, despite the vehicle being equipped with two surveillance cameras, Tien Phong (Pioneer) newspaper reported. 

The student was in normal health when coming back to the school, according to a school’s representative, who has met the student’s parents for apologies.

In a post on the school’s Facebook page, Vu Thi Bao Tram, the school’s principal, wrote: “The school’s management board, teachers and related staff would like to bow their heads to admit their mistakes, committing not to have any other incidents that cause unsafe conditions and affect the health and psychology of students and their families.”

“This incident is very regrettable but it fortunately has not affected the student’s health. We accept our faults.

"We will convene a meeting and handle all those held responsible for the happening. We will also recheck the entire student pick-up and drop-off process," VTC News cited Hang as saying.

Four years ago, a first grader of Gateway International School, also in Hanoi’s Cau Giay District, died after he was neglected for hours on August 6, 2019 in a van contracted by his school to transport students.

At a hearing in January 2020, the district People’s Court sentenced three people, including the van driver, the head teacher of the dead student’s class and the staff in charge of student transport, to 12-24 months in prison each for their negligence causing the fatality.

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