Memorandum from Cycling England (ST 28)
SCHOOL TRAVEL—EXTENSION
OF SCOPE
Cycling England is the national body which co-ordinates
the development of cycling across England. We aim to create the
conditions which will result in more people cycling, more safely,
more often. Cycling England has a budget of £140 million
over the next three years supporting two flagship programmes—a
network of 17 Cycling Towns and one large Cycling City investing
European levels of funding to increase cycling levels, and the
expansion of Bikeability, cycling proficiency for the 21st century,
to 500,000 10 year-olds by 2012.
Summary
— The specialised diplomas launched
in September will give thousands more young people the chance
to remain in education and training at the age of 16. The Department
for Children, Schools & Families (DCSF) has announced £23
million to help rural areas put in place plans to ensure all young
people can benefit from the opportunities offered by the diplomas.
— Recent DCSF research has shown that
there should be no significant transport issues in delivering
the first five diplomas from September. However, the DCSF has
recognised that more work needs to be done to ensure that local
authorities and 14-19 partnerships are ready to meet the demand
as it builds in future years. The Department has advised that
all 14-19 partnerships should develop more coordinated plans for
travel between learning centres, using contracted bus services
and available public transport to make efficiency savings.
— Cycling could play a significant
role in helping 14-19 partnerships develop their travel plans
and ensure access to the diplomas for young people in both urban
and rural communities. The partnerships should consider ways to
encourage teenagers to cycle to school or college, including offering
cycle training and improving cycling infrastructure such as cycle
parking.
— The following document outlines how
Cycling England has been working to encourage more people to cycle
more safely more often, with particular focus on primary school
children, and suggests how this might be applied to students aged
16-19, especially those benefiting from the new diplomas.
Encouraging children to cycle to school
1. Getting more children to cycle to school
is a major focus for Cycling England. Bikeability, our cycle training
programme, is our flagship initiative in this area, complemented
by a number of supporting projects such as investment in building
safe routes to schools, cycle parking and the development of cycling-based
classroom resources. Currently, Cycling England works predominately
with primary schools, equipping today's nine and 10 year-olds
with the skills and confidence to cycle to school. However, in
order to meet the immediate needs of today's teenagers studying
at secondary schools and colleges, especially those offering the
new diplomas, we would recommend expanding the Bikeability scheme
to offer Bikeability training to teenagers via 14-19 partnerships.
2. Cycling to school incorporates physical
activity into young people's daily routine and has well-documented
benefits, from reducing congestion to improving fitness levels.
However, despite the average journey to secondary school being
under three miles, the school run is increasingly driven, rather
than walked or cycled.
— The number of children travelling
to school by car has doubled in the last 20 years.
— 43% of all primary school children
are taken to school by car—creating over 500 million trips
per year.
— Before 9.00 am, one in five cars
on the road are on the school run.[50]
— A 2007 study by Cycling England demonstrated
that cycling levels among young people in general had fallen
by 50% in the space of a generation, with 91% of today's children
never having cycled to school.[51]
— A subsequent Cycling England study
to mark Bike to School Week 2008 showed that while parents most
commonly admitted that they had been permitted to cycle on roads
at 10, they are now clamping down on their own children's freedoms
due to safety fears, waiting on average until they reach the age
of 12 before letting them cycle on the roads.
Bikeability
3. In order to address this generational
decline, Cycling England introduced Bikeability. Bikeability is
cycling proficiency for the 21st century, updated to include professional
on-road training in addition to the initial playground basic handling
skills. Its three levels are designed to improve children's road
sense and cycling competence. The Bikeability course is specially
designed to equip children with the skills to cycle in today's
road conditions, with three levels:
— Level one offers basic bike handling
skills in a controlled environment away from roads.
— Level two teaches children to cycle
planned routes on minor roads, offering real cycling experience.
— Level three, normally undertaken
in secondary school, ensures cyclists are able to manage all traffic
conditions, including busy roads and advanced road features.
With the on-road elements of Bikeability levels
two and three, children no longer have to wait until they drive
to be coached in navigating past other vehicles: they can be tutored
in traffic sense at nine, 10 and 11—a good thing for all
road-users. It also allows children and teenagers to experience
independent travel for the first time, both to school/college
and to leisure facilities.
4. Having launched less than two years ago,
Bikeability is now well and truly established. Half of all local
authorities are now offering the training and earlier this year,
the Government expanded Cycling England's funding allocation to
allow 500,000 10 year-olds to access Bikeability training by 2012.
Initial monitoring has shown that 80% of Bikeability instructors
witnessed an increase in the number of children cycling to school
following the training, and two-thirds of children themselves
reported they were cycling more. When Cycling England made grants
available for local authorities to fund cycle training schemes
at the end of 2007, we were flooded with applications—demonstrating
the continuing enthusiasm for Bikeability across the country.
5. Cycling England has been working closely
with the Youth Sport Trust to embed Bikeability within School
Sports Partnerships, groups of schools working together to develop
PE and sport opportunities for young people. Schools are where
supply and demand for Bikeability meet, and School Sports Partnerships
provide an effective channel for promoting and delivering Bikeability
directly to schools across the country. Over the last year, Cycling
England has prioritised working with individual School Sports
Partnerships in areas where Bikeability was not yet being delivered,
providing technical assistance to Partnership Development Managers
to help them get their Bikeability schemes off the ground. As
a result of this work, 40 School Sports Partnerships are already
delivering Bikeability, with more due to sign up in autumn 2008.
6. However, still more could be done. Extending
Bikeability training to older children and teenagers would increase
participation rates still further, as well as helping 14-19 Partnerships
to meet their transport and travel objectives.
7. Bikeability is complemented and co-ordinated
by a number of supporting projects such as investment in building
safe routes to schools and cycle parking, as well as funding for
innovative schools projects such as "Bike It".
Bike It
8. Alongside the cycle industry, local authorities,
and Transport for London, Cycling England continues to support
"Bike It", a nationwide scheme which aims to get more
children cycling through the school gates, using in-school "champions"
to drum up support and create excitement about cycling. Managed
by Sustrans, the project has continued to go from strength to
strength in the past year: in line with previous years, the scheme
has seen a trebling of cycling levels at the schools in which
it operates. Bike It started four years ago with just four officers
working in 10 schools each. This year, further funding from Cycling
England, the cycle industry, the Big Lottery Fund's Well-Being
programme, the Welsh Assembly Government and local authorities
enabled Bike It to expand their team to 29 staff, each supported
by a regional supervisor/trainer and the national manager. Bike
It now works with 300 schools in 44 local authorities and estimates
that the programme is giving a positive cycling experience to
60,000 children. Cycling England has recommended that Bike It
be extended to every primary and secondary school in England,
ensuring that young people of all ages are encouraged to travel
independently to their place of study by bike.
Safe Routes to School
9. ne of the key roles of the Bike It cycling
champions is working with parents, teachers and School Travel
Plan advisors to identify safe routes to school. However, while
champions can help signpost safe routes which already exist, an
integrated infrastructure investment programme is needed to provide
new links to schools where they are missing, and to produce effective
street signage. Cycling England continues to work with Sustrans,
the sustainable transport charity, on the Safe Routes to School
programme, which seeks to connect schools and their communities
to the National Cycle Network. Thirty-six new links were built
in 2007-08 adding to the 75 links created last year, and connecting
hundreds of schools to their communities. Extra funding allocated
to Cycling England by the Government earlier this year will allow
another 250 Safe Links to School to be created, connecting around
500 more schools to the National Cycle Network. Many schools with
links have already doubled the number of pupils cycling to school,
with evidence suggesting children are also using the paths for
other kinds of journeys including commuting, shopping and other
leisure trips. Our experience from the Bike It scheme, as well
as from our Cycling Towns programme, has shown that travel planning
advice and maps are crucial to encouraging more people to cycle.
We recommend that 14-19 partnerships incorporate cycle travel
planning advice into their travel plans for secondary school and
college students.
Improving cycling infrastructure
10. Improving cycling infrastructure is
undeniably one of the most effective ways of changing behaviour,
and planning in cycling infrastructure is more cost-effective
than retro-fitting it later on. Our Cycling Demonstration Towns,
set up in 2005 to promote cycling through a range of hard and
soft measures, have already fast-tracked this approach. For example,
in Exeter, the Council has taken advantage of the development
of local secondary schools, acting to integrate four new schools
with the cycle network by off-road cycle and pedestrian paths
from day one. Schools are also well provided with parking facilities,
with enough cycle racks in place for one in 10 pupils to ride
to school every day. Working with Sustrans, Cycling England provides
bike storage grants to schools all over the country as part of
the Safe Routes to Schools scheme. We recommend that 14-19 Partnerships
audit the provision of cycle parking in secondary schools and
colleges in their areas as part of their plans to meet demand
for secondary school travel as it develops in future years.
Cycling Towns
11. Due to increased Government funding,
our Cycling Towns programme has been extended: we now have 17
Cycling Towns around the country and our first ever Cycling City
in Bristol (with South Gloucestershire). With the expansion of
the Cycling Towns programme, over 2.5 million adults and children
will now benefit from levels of investment equivalent to the best
European cycling cities, and each Town has committed to delivering
Bikeability in every school. There is an opportunity to encourage
14-19 partnerships in each of the 17 Towns and in Bristol to include
cycling as part of their package of measures to improve transport
provision for teenagers.
Conclusion
12. Cycling England would value the opportunity
to make contact with the network of 14-19 Partnerships to explore
the possibility of incorporating cycling into travel planning
for pupils aged 16 and over, and, in particular, broadening the
provision of Bikeability training up to level 3 to secondary school
and college students.
September 2008
50 These figures are taken from Cycling England's Bike
to the Future II paper, August 2007. Back
51
Setting The Wheels In Motion: how to encourage children back on
their bikes, Cycling England, March 2007. Back
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