Walk to School

After five years involvement at national and international level, Robert Smith (pictured), Dorset County Council’s team leader – road safety is leaving Walk to School to take up a strategic road safety role with his authority. In this feature he looks back at the evolution of Walk to School, and forward to the movement’s future.

As ‘walk to school’ promotional activities get a big media boost later this month with the National Summer Walk To School Week (19th-23rd May), and again in October with International Walk To School Week (6th-10th October), it is perhaps a good time to reflect on the past, present and future of this initiative.

What started in 1994 as a pilot ‘Travelwise Walk To School Week’ with a handful of supportive schools has grown to be an international award winner with more than three million participants in almost 30 countries.

My own involvement started in 1995 when, as Dorset's road safety officer responsible for school and community projects, material from the Pedestrians Association (now Living Streets) promoting its first National Walk To School Week, arrived in my in-tray (long before e-mail).

Scepticism
I have to admit to having been a bit sceptical at first, as I couldn't see the logic of encouraging children to partake in what some may have seen at that time as promoting a far riskier mode of travel to and from school.

My doubts were soon put to rest when I read the promotional material, which emphasised that the main aims of the initiative were to encourage accompanied walking to school and to raise awareness of the many health, environmental, educational and community safety benefits of regular walking to and from school.

Growth
The following year saw The National Travelwise Association join forces with the Pedestrians' Association to co-ordinate the promotion of National Walk To School Week. A small working group was formed, which included representatives from each of the partner agencies, including road safety officers and representatives from the DfT.

The group's role was, and still is, to co-ordinate the promotion of National Walk To School Week. Its members produce the national materials for sale and distribution each year to all local authorities. It liaises closely with the DfT on appropriate themes for national walk to school press releases and continues to seek partnerships with suitable national sponsors and other interested agencies.

For my own part, I was invited to join the national co-ordinating group in 1998 following the publication of Dorset County Council's own walk to school materials for parents, children and teachers and the fact that I was just about to launch our own walk to school website.

International developments
It was the later adoption of this Dorset website as the UK's national walk to school website that created the incentive for an International Walk To School Planning Group.

By early 1999 I had already been in contact - via the web - with a wide range of co-ordinating agencies in the USA and Canada who had been organising their own similar national events in early October each year. From this spawned the first International Walk To School Day in 2000 with nine countries participating. Now known as IWALK, its own dedicated website provides links to other walk to school co-ordinators worldwide.

A UK perspective
Last year it was estimated that more than 120 local authorities across the UK actively promoted the summer national walk to school week with the distribution of 1.2m parent leaflets, 1.3m stickers and 20,000 posters. The autumn/international week enjoyed similar levels of support.

The media love it and so do sponsors. It has been viewed by some as the main mass participation event linking primary school children and parents with health, education and safety issues. It has been used extensively to launch walking buses, more regular walking initiatives, safer routes to school projects, practical pedestrian training and more recently as a development task within School Travel Plans to meet locally set targets for travel mode change. Many schools now have it as a regular calendar entry.

Evaluation
I carried out an evaluation last year of some 45 local authorities that regularly participate in the initiative. It was found that on average about half of their primary schools actively support the weeks but a few recorded almost 100 per cent participation. Most say this figure is still increasing each year although it is becoming more difficult to think of new ideas to promote the events for those that have been doing it for some time. The average annual spend on walk to school weeks per local authority was about £2,500 - however, with best value in mind, only 40 per cent carry out any evaluation. Many recorded walking levels up by as much as 20 per cent during the week compared with the previous week and one or two recorded 10 per cent increases up to four or five weeks after the event. As ever though, this tails off in the autumn - hence the need for a walk to school focus in early October, which can be combined with the Be-Safe - Be-Seen pedestrian safety message. All but one said they planned to continue and expand their involvement in the initiative but needed lower cost materials and new ideas.

As a result of this, the working group is presently in negotiation with the DfT to secure funding for a full time project officer to develop the initiative, disseminate best practice and seek a suitable long-term national sponsor.

The future
And so to the future.

This year approaches have been made to the Guiness Book of Records to establish whether the longest/largest organised walk to school event would be accepted as an official entry by either an individual school or a pyramid of schools. This may then encourage schools to contact each other via the national and international walk to school websites to share experiences of their promotion of walking, which had always been one of the key aims of the international initiative.

I shall shortly be leaving the Walk To School groups to focus on strategic road safety issues within my own local authority. I've been most fortunate to have represented the International Walk To School Group at seminars and conferences in Brussels, Berlin and Stockholm, where IWALK received the Stockholm Partnership for Sustainable Cities Award from King Karl Gustav last year. My final farewell will be to pass this prestigious award onto my colleagues in the United States at the International Walk21 Conference in Portland, Oregon on 1st May.

Without doubt, the key to the success of the awareness raising initiative is down to both the dedication and professionalism of colleagues on both the UK and international groups and to the extraordinary levels of innovation from road safety and travel awareness officers at a local level.

I still despair when I hear of parents who live close to the school claim that they don't have time to accompany their children on foot even part of the way. When you then see them arriving 45 minutes before the end of school every day to grab the best parking space and then to sit in their cars reading the paper, it just adds to the frustration.

However, the initiative must continue and grow and with a quote of support on the website from the Prime Minister himself, the initiative has already taken ‘giant steps’ forward.

Further information about walk to school can be found at:-
www.walktoschool.org.uk and www.iwalktoschool.org.