Key Information - 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 ensure that the school acts 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

Walk to School Weeks

This initiative encourages pupils to walk all or part of the way to school on a walk to school weeks. We use a wide range of themes and activities which encourage the children to walk. (For example scavenger hunts, funky footwear). In our Praise Assemblies we celebrate with the children who walk from home or from outside a 250m radius from the schools.

Blizzards Yard Parking Scheme.

The schools benefit from free parking for the first hour in Blizzards Yard car park behind the Co-Op. The car park is over 250 metres from the school so offers the chance for pupils who cannot walk to school to take part in our walking schemes 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.

Making Tracks Training

Making Tracks is a pedestrian training scheme for Year 6 children, which develops awareness of roads and helps them plan their routes in preparation for their transition to secondary school. Children are taken into the local area with a trained tutor to observe the traffic and discuss road safety. We aim to train all year 6 pupils in the Summer Term each year.

Cycle Training

During the Spring/ Summer term Year 5 children are given the opportunity to take part in cycle training. This is completed with trained tutors from the Spokes Cycle Training Company. This initiative is subsidised by the school and parents are asked for a contribution towards the tutoring costs.

During the training children work towards Bikeability Level 2 which covers the following areas:

• Start and finish a journey by road, including passing parked or slower moving vehicles.
• Be aware of everything around you and signal your intentions to other road users when someone needs to know what you’re doing.
• Position yourself properly on the road and pass side roads.
• Use junctions including turning left and right into major and minor roads.
• Decide whether a cycle lane will help with your journey.
• Use the Highway Code, particularly when it comes to understanding road signs.

Year 6 children may cycle to school and use the school bike racks on completion of a Cycle Permit from parents.

Parking Promise

As part of our induction to the schools we ask parents to sign a Parking Promise. The aim of the promise is to highlight the need to avoid parking near to either school site to ensure the safety of pedestrians. The Safety Zone around each school is clearly identified so that parents are clear where it is safe to park and the areas they should avoid.

Message from Bucks Fire and Rescue:

Please Let Us Through’….

It has been proved recently in a local incident that inconsiderate parking can cause life-threatening delays to emergency service vehicles that are trying to reach a school.

Please can you ensure that you park in designated car parks in the village and avoid the roads around the schools so that we can keep the access to the schools and local houses clear.

Feb 2020