A school bus or school omnibus is a bus used to transport children and adolescents to and from school. The first school bus was horse-drawn, introduced in 1827 by George Shillibeer for a Quaker school at Abney Park in Stoke Newington, London, United Kingdom and was designed to carry 25 children.blank">http://www.stokenewingtonquakers.org.uk/nbhist1.html The bus has subsequently become a major mode of transportation, particularly for transporting children to school. Children may travel to school on regular public bus services. In some cases public bus services may run field trips and high school athletic events, and private coach services may put on their own paid services. In _North America, however, the school bus is itself a specific type of bus distinct from other buses. Canada and the United States have specially built, painted and equipped school buses. They are commonly painted a "yellow-orange" color (officially known as "National School Bus Chrome Yellow") for purposes of visibility and safety and equipped with specialized traffic warning devices, with the exception of school activity buses (normally used exclusively for point-to-point field and athletic trips and not used for home delivery routes) which are built to the same standards but are customarily some color other than orange and are usually not equipped with traffic warning devices. Most purchased in recent years have been diesel-powered or hybrid. Full-size school buses can seat 59 to 90 passengers, but in many districts smaller vehicles are used as well. Such smaller vehicles are commonly known as "short buses", and are often used for low-density routes associated with private schools and programs for magnet programs and developmentally-challenged students.Bus companies include International, Genesis, Ford, Mack, and others

Most U.S. school districts purchase the buses and hire their own drivers, while others engage the service of school bus contractors such as Laidlaw to perform this function. The Average cost of a new school bus is between $60,000 and $100,000 although used school buses can be bought for as little as $3,000. School bus services in the UK in almost all cases are contracted out to local bus companies. Elsewhere in Europe school bus services are contracted to local bus companies, which use regional buses that operate on regular lines at other times, or in some cases older regional buses.