BackPilot project to encourage secondary school pupils to walk has reached a close in London
Cumberland School in Newham has completed the first ever London pilot grid game to encourage Secondary School pupils to walk to school.
The scheme, run by national charity Living Streets through their Step Up campaign, in partnership with Newham Council, is designed around a code-breaking challenge where plastic grids are positioned at key locations on route to the school. Students are then issued with special collector cards which, when placed over the grids, reveal a unique four letter word. The grids at Cumberland School were changed once a week for 10 weeks and once the pupils collected all ten words, they completed the challenge and won a prize.
The scheme has been piloted across all 1500 students from all age groups, at the school for past 10 weeks. Currently only 41% of secondary school pupils walk to school regularly and a fifth of all secondary pupils are driven to school. Walking to school is a brilliant way to build activity into the school day and can have huge impacts on students’ health, as well as making them more aware of dangers on the roads. By increasing the number of pupils who walk, it also helps to ease congestion around the School at peak times.
Carla Lowe, Assistant School Travel Advisor at Newham Council commented that the pupils who took part in the scheme felt that they were encouraged to walk..
Tony Armstrong, Chief Executive of Living Streets said:
“It’s been fantastic to pilot this brand new project in London for the first time and we hope we can roll it out nationally to get students walking across the country. At secondary school we truly start tasting independence, and make the free choices and habits that we will carry with us throughout our adult lives.
“One in five cars on the road at peak time is on the school run, and figures show the number of secondary school pupils being driven is still rising. Not only that, but a quarter of under 17s say they never walk for 20 minutes or more at a time, resulting in serious consequences for their health. We need to make regular walking an attractive option again, and this code breaking project is a brilliant way to start!”
Step Up, funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Wellbeing programme, uses the knowledge and inspiration from the pupils themselves to create a fresh way of spreading the walking message.
For more information contact Anna Powell, Press Officer at anna.powell@livingstreets.org.uk, tel: 020 7377 4914.
Published on: 08/08/2009
