School Travel Planning

Purpose of the School Travel Plan

  • To determine the school travel and road safety problems affecting parents, pupils and the local community.
  • To produce a School Travel Action Plan in consultation with the school and local community and to monitor, review and update it as changes occur.
  • To act as liaison, where appropriate, between the School and County Council Transportation departments dealing with Safer Routes to School programmes and with highways initiatives affecting local routes to the school.
  • To promote walking in preference to car use for journeys to school, and to promote safer parking alternatives where cars must be used.
  • To promote road safety awareness amongst pupils and to encourage awareness of the health and environmental impact of walking and car use.

The school travel plan also links to the healthy schools initiative by encouraging children to make walking an integral part of each school day.

Current Initiatives

Crocodiles

A Crocodile Trail (also sometimes called a “walking bus”) is a County Council-backed scheme where trained parent “escorts” walk a number of children to school along a designated route on certain days of the week. The Council assesses the routes to be used and suggests ways to avoid potential hazards. It also offers training, insurance, attractive yellow tabards and insists on Crocodiles following operating rules. These are that all escorts must be trained and CRB checked, that at least two escorts must be present at all times and that we operate with no more than six children per escort (four if escorts are pushing a buggy or are walking with a child under 5 years old). There are spot-checks by the Council at least once a term to ensure the rules are being adhered to.

Please contact the school for current crocodiles to school.

WOW (Walk on Wednesday)

The WOW initiative encourages pupils to walk all or part of the way to school every Wednesday. Children walking from home or from outside a 250m radius from the school every day in a term are given a small award in assembly. Once a term there is also a Whole School Walk during school hours where pupils walk together through part of the village to reinforce messages about road safety and exercise.

Blizzards Yard parking scheme

Chiltern District Council support these initiatives by allowing the school to issue parking permits to parents to use Blizzards Yard car park behind the Co-op at school drop-off and pick-up times. The car park is just over 250 metres from the school so offers the chance for pupils who cannot walk to school to take part in the WOW scheme and gain healthy exercise from a bracing uphill walk before school.

Footsteps Training

Footsteps is a pedestrian training scheme for young children, which develops awareness of roads and helps them live safely with traffic. Children are taken into the local area with a trained tutor to observe the traffic and discuss road safety. It includes:

  • the Green Cross Code.
  • safe places.
  • vehicle lights.
  • stopping, looking and listening.
  • crossing - while holding an adult's hand.
  • fast and slow.
  • near and far.
  • parked cars.
  • crossing.
  • being seen.
  • weather conditions.

We aim to train all year 1 pupils in the Summer Term each year. They are taken out in pairs by trained parent tutors on two separate occasions in order to give a basic understanding of road safety concepts. When they have successfully understood and demonstrated the concepts the pupil receives a certificate and a badge. Footsteps training is also given to all children who walk on the Crocodile Trails.

Useful links

County Council Transport department (walking policy)
www.buckscc.gov.uk follow the links to Transport then Walking.

Highways on Call 0845 230 2882 to report maintenance problems such as potholes on roads or surfaced footpaths.
www.buckscc.gov.uk follow the links to Transport then Highways on Call.

Hedgehogs - If you want to check out the latest road safety advice for children look at www.hedgehogs.gov.uk which is a fun central government website aimed mainly at junior school aged children but which may appeal to younger ones as well.

Chiltern District Council are responsible for certain aspects of the local environment such as street cleaning and dog bins. They also have a number of suggestions for leisure walks in the area. Start at www.chiltern.gov.uk and follow the links through Environment or Leisure and Culture