Walk to School Outreach
The Walk To School Outreach (WTSO) project is delivered by Living Streets in partnership with 5 combined authority partners and 12 local authorities/county councils.
Its aim is to encourage children and their families to overcome barriers to walking to school, by supporting schools both to tackle barriers to walking and take part in WOW - the walk to school challenge.
The project aims to help the Government reach its target of 55% of children walking to school by 2025. The project is funded through a grant from Active Travel England.
Throughout the 23-24 project, we aim to support over 600 schools to increase walking rates to school. See if your school is eligible below.
Making an impact
Our 2022-23 project saw:
1,111 primary schools
supported throughout the year
Over 330,000 children
logging their journeys on Travel Tracker
A 7 percentage point
modal shift to walking or wheeling all the way to school
14.3 million
new walking journeys
Over 2.5 million
car km removed from the roads at peak times
20%
of our schools from the top 10% most deprived areas of England
What our schools say
"At St Clare's we are proud of our partnership with WOW in increasing our school’s walking rates. WOW helps St Clare's support pupils’ health and wellbeing while reducing congestion and pollution around our school gates."
Mr C Murphy, Assistant Head, St Clare`s Catholic Primary School, Birmingham
"Woodlands Academy is a special school catering for students with a range of SEND, including autism and learning difficulties. The students have really taken to the WOW project and embraced keeping fit and active getting to and from school - but also generally being fit and active wherever and whenever possible."
Teacher, Woodlands Academy, Nottingham
"We are very proud of our place on the WOW Top Ten leaderboard. This recognises the ongoing commitment of our amazing school community to make sustainable travel their first choice for the journey to school."
Alex Palmer, Head Teacher, Stannington First School
"We have loved being a part of WOW and so have the children. They have really taken pride in participating in active travel and have loved receiving their badges. The website has been really easy to use and track which pupils are travelling actively."
Teacher (SENCO), St. Matthew's Catholic Primary School, Bradford
Walk to School Outreach in action
Through the Walk to School Outreach project, schools take part in WOW - the walk to school challenge, which encourages pupils and their families to travel more actively to school.
WOW is a pupil-led initiative where children self-report how they get to school every day using our interactive WOW Travel Tracker. If they travel sustainably (walk, cycle or scoot) once a week for a month, they get rewarded with a badge. It's that easy! It's simple to run and children love taking part.
Depending on your area and our funding availability, your school may be eligible to run WOW for free. Funded places for the school year 23-24 are limited and subject to funding eligibility.
Our project partners
