Walking and Cycling to School

The school day begins not just at registration, but when a child sets off from home. Whether by foot, bike, bus, train or car, the journey to school is an important part of the day for both parents and children.

Encouraging children and their parents to travel to and from school without the car can help create safer and cleaner environments. It reduces traffic and congestion, and improves air quality around schools. Children are also more alert and ready to actively engage in class, while also benefiting from the exercise of the journey.
 

Sustainable Modes of Travel Strategy (SMoTS)

The Sustainable Modes of Travel Strategy (for Schools) [1MB]  (SMoTS) helps us plan how we deliver the daily journey between your child's school and home. The idea behind the SMoTS strategy is to encourage less children to go to school as a solitary passenger in a car, and to increase the number of pupils walking, cycling or scooting to school.

Through the SMoTS strategy, we are able to monitor how children travel to school, and set targets and develop schemes to encourage sustainable travel methods. Sustaintable travel means travelling in a manner which reduces your impact on the environment and the local community, such as walking, cycling, car sharing, or taking public transport to help reduce congestion and emissions.

These targets are measured each year through a survey. We then use this information to identify which schools have low levels of sustainable transport journeys and may benefit from more support, and to influence our updates to the SMoTS strategy.
 

School Travel Plans

Our schools play an active part in encouraging children to walk and cycle to school, through School Travel Plans (STP). Every school in our district has an STP which they use to set targets to encourage greater walking, cycling and scooting to school. 

The STP also states how they will try to reduce the number of children arriving by car. Within the plan, the schools identify schemes that will help them to achieve these goals.

To help encourage schools to continue their efforts, we are changing the way we monitor STPs. Using an interactive website from Modeshift, we are helping schools to monitor and update their STP continually, and we reward those schools who achieve excellence in school travel.
 

Sustainable Travel to School Reward Schemes

We are encouraging children under 11 to walk to school is through two reward schemes, Go Kinetic, designed for children aged 5 to 11, and Steposaurus, for children at nursery.

Both of the schemes encourage children to walk, scoot or cycle to school on a regular basis, by offering a range of rewards. The schemes can also help to encourage those who live further away from the school, by walking the final few hundred metres to the school gates.

There are a range of rewards available, including reflective bands and the chance to join in with half and full-day activity sessions, such as swimming. 

The following downloadable guides explain how each scheme works, and ways we can help schools get started:

• Go Kinetic Guide [459KB]
• Steposaurus Guide [274KB]
   

Other Schemes

We also provide opportunities for schools to encourage cycling. Bikeability helps teach children how to cycle on the roads under supervised instruction, giving them the skills and confidence to ride their bikes safely alongside moving vehicle traffic. 

You can find further information about Bikeability and other cycle schemes on our walking and cycling and cycle training webpages.

We have also issued guidance for parents to consider how they park outside the school gate. The  considerate car use leaflet [426KB] helps parents to understand that how they park may create safety problems for other children and adults walking and cycling home.

The government-backed Change4Life programme may also help give you some great ideas on how to make small changes to your child's journey to school. Encouraging these activities from an early age can help build good routines later on in life, and help tackle childhood health issues, while also helping to improve the local environment.
 

The RouteGuard App

RouteGuard is a pioneering app that uses geolocation technology to give reassurance to parents/guardians, and security to children, for their local unaccompanied journeys.

As a RouteGuardian, parents will be able to plan, monitor, and adjust routes and pre-defined zones, encouraging mutual agreement with their child.

You can find out more about RouteGuard and how to use it on our RouteGuard Travel App webpage or on the RouteGuard website.