Walk To School, a campaign jointly promoted by The National Travelwise Association and Living Streets, aims to raise awareness of the benefits that children and their parents can gain by walking to school.
To encourage local authorities to provide better data on how many pupils are walking to school, Young TransNet has developed a Hands Up Survey tool, which will be tested in two local authority areas - Essex and Oxfordshire - during the summer term. It is planned to make the tool more widely available for the Autumn Walk To School campaign on 4 - 8 October 2004
"Walking is a great way for children and parents to spend time together and get to know their neighbourhood," said Andrew Stuck, Young TransNet co-ordinator.
Young TransNet also runs the Healthy Transport Channel, an internet based project funded by the Department of Health, which provides teachers with an array of ideas on motivating pupils to walk to school. These include a travel log which allows students to enter the amount of time they spend each day travelling by healthy means. To encourage regular use of the feature, healthy travel time is converted into points which can be used to feed and look after a "virtual pet".
- For more information visit http://www.youngtransnet.org.uk/healthchannel/index.html and www.walktoschool.org.uk.
