Some schools used brightly coloured carousels corresponding to their chosen mode of travel –an excellent visual way of collecting data

Surrey schools rise to Golden Boot Challenge

For five fun-filled Fridays this summer over 22,580 pupils from 101 Surrey schools competed in the Golden Boot Challenge. An amazing 81 per cent of pupils that took part in the Challenge chose green methods of travel to school such as walking, scooting, cycling, car share and even pony power!

The annual challenge is a ‘Way 2 Go’ event and has been set up by Surrey County Council as part of its Safe Routes to Schools programme to encourage schools to become more involved in school travel planning. It is aimed at primary school children who compete in an inter-class competition designed to make them more aware of healthier and greener choices in the way they travel to school.

During the five- week competition pupils recorded the ways in which they travelled to school by adding a cartoon sticker to a poster corresponding to the means of travel they used each Friday morning. One poster was for each class and another for the whole school to enable class scores to be compared. Some schools used brightly coloured carousels to record the number of points each class had by dropping balls into clear tubes that corresponded to their chosen mode of travel –an excellent visual way of collecting data (see pic above).

Pupils scored points when they used alternatives to the car and the class with the most points won the coveted Golden Boot trophy.

Many innovative ways of travel were chosen. Seven year old Charlie Sullivan (see pic opposite) had help from a four-legged friend in the quest to help her class win the coveted trophy, and thought nothing of riding her pony seven miles to school. They even stopped off en route at a friend’s house where Ian the pony was given an early breakfast of apples to help him on his way.

Charlie’s head teacher Jane Whittington said, "Ian is such a friendly little horse and he caught the imagination of everyone at the school.
All pupils thoroughly enjoyed walking and scooting to school and thought that if Ian could walk, then so could they! Whole families were enthused with the Golden Boot idea and we hope that this has shown how much quicker and healthier it is to walk than to use the car on the school journey."

For more information, contact David Sharpington, school travel policy co-ordinator on 020 8541 9977 david.sharpington@surreycc.gov.uk or visit www4.surreycc.gov.uk/srs