More than one million children across the UK are expected to participate in Walk to School Week 2011, according to the organisers Living Streets.
The week, part of National Walking Month, is designed to encourage children to walk to school throughout the year. As part of the week resources are created to help parents, children, schools and local authorities to run events and activities to raise awareness about walking to school.
Living Streets says: “Walking is healthy, green, fun and free. Yet today, less than half of all primary school children walk to school, and our obesity, pollution and congestion levels are rising.
“We’re here to help anyone who wants to start walking to school – whether that’s all the way, parking up and walking the last 10 minutes, or just getting off the bus early. It all counts!”
Ellen Midwood, head of Walk to School campaign, says: “We are recruiting local authorities and schools to take part and order our classroom resources. These contain quizzes on road safety tailored to Key Stages 1 and 2 that support the DfT’s THINK! key learning objectives for the national curriculum.”
The closing date to order resources is 18 March.
For more information contact Ellen Midwood on 020 7377 4900.
It is comforting to know that one million children will take part in this initiative. I agree that walking to school is “healthy, green, fun and free.” In childhood, I did it every day, in all weathers, from 1947 to 1957. However, I would welcome the same time, effort and funding to appear in road safety education for these children bearing in mind that crossing the road is the most dangerous activity a child does on a daily basis. A local authority known to me had a walk-to-school week resulting in the one of the schools winning the Golden Boot Award. A year later most of the children from that school were unable to recall anything of significance and the golden boot was found, covered in dust, at the bottom of a cupboard. In contrast, pupils educated in road safety by an RSO were able to recall a year later that a car travelling at 30mph is covering 13.5 meters every second and needs six car lengths to stop. I suppose it is a question of priorities.
Roy Buchanan, Sutton
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