How do we grow active travel in schools?

Enabling active travel among primary school children provides numerous benefits for pupils, including:

• Guarding against many long-term diseases such as diabetes and obesity2
• Perhaps most importantly: Being active plays a key role in brain development in early childhood and is also good for longer-term educational attainment. 2

Therefore, investment in active travel is an investment in a child’s long-term future.

However, there are many challenges that can reduce the likelihood of a child participating in active travel schemes.

This article explores how these challenges can be addressed among school children.

More on the health benefits of active travel: https://turvec.com/blog/the-health-benefits-of-active-travel 

The challenges that need to be addressed

Despite 80% of British children aged 8 to 10 owning a bike1, there remain many challenges that can create barriers to translating that into regular active travel.

A meta-analysis of barriers has identified three main barrier categories: 2

Personal barriers

• No time
• Difficulty dropping child off on the way to work
• Heaviness of the child’s backpack

Physical environment barriers

• Traffic safety
• Distance
• Poor cycling infrastructure
• Inadequate storage provisions
• Bad weather
• Lighting

Social environment

• Neighbourhood safety
• Stranger danger
• No adult to travel with
• Concerns about something happening to child on the way
• Getting lost

How to overcome the challenges in place 

Transport for Greater Manchester has recently announced an ambitious goal of having 70% of primary school students across the region using active travel to get to school by 2030. 3 

Delivering upon objectives like this requires committees to deliver integrated strategies to mitigates the barriers in existence, including:

• Creating safer streets around schools
• Continuing to deliver upon and improve active travel infrastructure
• Improved access to bikes and bike storage
• Engaging with schools and local communities

Exploration of additional techniques that can grow active travel in schools

Growing active travel interventions 

Increasing active travel interventions, such as infrastructure growth and educational programmes, within primary schools to two interventions per school could increase active travel rates among pupils by as much as 5% on current levels, according to findings by Sustrans. 6

Events, education and champions

Schemes and education

‘Bike It’ has been successful in increasing levels of cycling to school by up to 4x in children across London by running events such as cycling breakfasts, bicycle maintenance, and cycle rides. 2

Champions 

Studies evaluating the initiative focus on the importance of linking to families and that parents/carers were involved and encouraged to support and cycle with their children. 2

Transport for Greater Manchester has also created an initiative of supporting young people to become travel champions, encouraging them to take a proactive role in growing active travel. 3

Gamification 

Gamification, such as adopting programmes like ‘Beat the Street’ can have a drastic improvement on active travel uptake.

One research project into the benefits of gamification found that the proportion of players reporting low levels of activity (less than 30 min per week) decreased by 7%, whereas the proportion reporting high levels of activity (150 or more minutes per week) increased by 13%. 

Equally, 53% fewer cars and vans were monitored travelling along a target road during morning commute times, and 33% fewer cars and 20% fewer vans were monitored during afternoon commute times. 4

A trial in Essex by Sport England found that gamification of active travel found a 53% reduction in traffic outside schools and a 17% increase in social cohesion. 5

Turvec’s commitment to facilitating active travel for school children

As highlighted above, improved access to bike storage is a critical facet of an integrated active travel strategy.

Turvec is dedicated to delivering:

• Safe, high-quality and dedicated active travel products tailored to the school environment
• Full project support to ensure that each school’s unique requirements are met

Discover our guide to delivering effective school bike storage today: https://turvec.com/blog/choosing-effective-school-cycle-storage 

Promoting family active travel: https://turvec.com/blog/family-friendly-cycling-routes-uk 

1 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/every-child-in-england-to-be-offered-cycle-training

2 https://www.jsna.info/sites/jsna.info/files/Active%20Travel%20Literature%20Review%202017_0.pdf

3 https://www.publicsectorexecutive.com/articles/transport-health-and-sustainability

4 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214140521003054

5 https://www.activeessex.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Gamification-Report-FINAL-min.pdf 

6 https://www.sustrans.org.uk/media/13066/susr2199-modelling-the-impact-of-active-travel-school-interventions-in-scotland-v20.pdf