After school, the school gate.

I know in NZ schools have running problems with cars and parents and double parking etc.I thought I'd share life on this side of the world at the school gate. In fact some of you may wish to employ additional adults to ensure the process goes swimmingly.

I work in a very privileged school with a reputation as a very good school to get into, in Ho Chi Minh City. Consequently people travel across the city to attend. I need to rephrase that, people are driven across the city to attend. The children can not leave the school with out an adult. The adults, nanny or sometimes Mum swipe their card to come into the school and then swipe to leave. The children do NOT have cards but the cards are registered against each child, that way the school can also keep track of attendance, arrival time leaving times etc.

At my TX campus I have been at the gate to watch the end of school procedure a few times and yesterday I managed to snap some photos.

The scenario

Tu Xuong Street is a narrow 2 way street. No cars are allowed to park against the curb in streets in downtown Ho Chi Minh, the streets are too narrow. The street is literally 2 small cars wide  Most cars that come to our school are Fortuners and coloured beige/ brown. The footpath is very narrow, approx 1 person wide at most. The main school gates are huge, I work behind a wall basically with a gate like the entrance to a fortress. The gate is rolled back at the end of school

The  system works like this.

The drivers mostly enter our street from the bottom end and curb crawl up to the school, on the school side of the street, logistically blocking half a road way. At the front gates of our school, the school guards put out cones, so that 3 cars at a time can come onto the small paved area in front of the school before moving off. All the caregivers and the children gather around the gate in the shade of the play equipment, all on their cell phones of course. Glued to their cell phones. As the first car draws to a stop, the guard calls out the child’s name. I have no idea how a guard can tell who each car belongs to when most cars are the same colour and have tinted windows, and if you can see the driver he will be Asian with dark hair. I can never see through the tinting. As the guard calls out the child’s name he opens the back door of the car, nothing like being chauffeur driven. If no child and carer comes forward the door is shut and if possible the car moves up to number 1 spot,  almost back on the road again. And of course the next car that was curb crawling moves forward. At any onetime we can have 3 cars boarding children. If after an interval the driver hasn’t connected with his child he should drive around the block and enter what reminds me of a  feeding frenzy, again. Few do so, they continue to semi block the road until said child and carer appears.

In the meantime some parents call up their driver, who arrives across the road, avoiding the curb crawling queue.  So now we have 2 rows of parked cars outside our school, and ordinary traffic trying to squeeze through this gap. The scene is dispersed with many motorbikes going too and fro as you would expect. There is a pedestrian crossing directly outside the school, however frequently pedestrian crossings are just white lines painted on the road. The children and adults wishing to cross the road are escorted, literally hand in hand by a guard who has a whistle and a long baton he waves around, pointing at offending motorists who think they have every right to proceed through down this narrow street. And after 20 minutes or so the roadway, and  school gate way is clear of both cars and people. Life resumes as normal until 3:40 pm when clubs end and we replicate the whole process all over again.

No one complains, no voices are raised. the whole system flows seamlessly. the only voices are that of the guards calling out a child's name.

I am reminded of a line from the play Pygmalian. “ Walk, not bloody likely”.