Walking With Mini Strider
St Matthew’s Church of England Primary School welcomed a special visitor to their school.
To celebrate National Walking Month in May 2025, St Matthew's embraced the opportunity to try something new by combining the pupils’ love of WOW - the walk to school challenge with storytelling and the help of Living Streets mascot, Strider.
As part of the initiative, pupils in Years 1, 2 and 4 took home a Mini Strider toy. Their mission was to take Mini Strider for a walk and then write about their adventure in a shared class journal before passing the toy on to a classmate to do the same.
The children took Mini Strider on a variety of walks around their local community, including visits to the mosque, the park, a boxing club, and even backstage at the theatre.
Since St Matthew's joined WOW in October 2024, journeys to school made entirely by car dropped from 43 per cent to 8.7 per cent.
To celebrate the pupils’ efforts, the real Strider made a surprise visit to St Matthew’s where they were greeted by pupils who were proud to showcase their journal entries about their adventures with Mini Strider.
Teachers at St Matthew's shared how the WOW – walk to school challenge has made a positive impact on pupils, from boosting daily exercise, to raising road safety awareness, and fostering teamwork and creativity among pupils.
Some children volunteered to become ‘walking buddies’, supporting classmates who were unable to walk to school by joining them for walking sessions during break times, ensuring everyone could take part. Other pupils persuaded their families to park their cars further from the school gates at pick up and drop off times so that they could walk part of the journey and take part in the challenge through park and stride.
Since St Matthew's joined WOW – the walk to school challenge in October 2024, journeys to school made entirely by car dropped from 43 per cent to 8.7 per cent. The number of journeys to school including walking, wheeling, cycling, scooting and Park and Stride showed an increase from 57 per cent to over 90 per cent.
Between October 2024 and the end of the 2025 academic school year, St Matthew's recorded a total of 30,893 active journeys to school.
