City of York Council is due to put in place a texting service after the half-term break, which has been dubbed YorTXT. It will be trialled at Fulford School, with an eye to rolling it out across the city if it proves a success.

It will be tested by Fulford students, who are travelling with the York Pullman bus service.

The aim is for students and parents to be able to report situations such as bullying and vandalism taking place on the bus as quickly as possible.

In addition, the parents and students will be able to give their feedback and opinions on the general quality of the bus service.

The idea came from parents at Fulford School who said that there was no feedback facility in place to comment on the quality of the bus service.

The way it works is that texts come into the Council’s York Customer Centre (YCC) in the form of an email, the IT system then passes them straight onto the school for action.

All messages coming in are kept confidential, the centre can not see names of senders.

The service is manned by the council and the centre will deal with all incoming messages from parents, pupils and bus monitors.

Messages from bus companies are texted straight to the system and automatically distributed to the relevant distribution lists including all passengers of a particular bus route that may be delayed.

This means that messages regarding delays can be passed on to passengers outside the centre’s office hours.

The new service will be made available from Thursday and if it is met positively in the trial, it will then be spread to schools across York.

Mark Ellis, who is the head of access in the council’s Children’s Services team, said: “The new service will provide a discreet way for parents and pupils to report any concerns they have, as well as providing a quick and easy way for the school to inform people about unforeseen events such as school closures or buses running late.”

The service is part of the More For York project. The project intends to improve services for residents by using technology.