Angry parents had to collect their children from the side of the road after a bus driver quit in the middle of their journey home.
The students from Kingston Maurward College and the Dorset Studio School were travelling from Dorchester to Bournemouth when the driver decided she had had enough and walked out on her job, pulling over near a depot in Poole.
Parents tracking their children on an app saw that the bus, which had already broken down on the journey and been replaced by another, had stopped at about 6.30pm on Wednesday.
One concerned mother said her son told her the students had to disembark onto a busy road, prompting safeguarding concerns from parents.