Written Evidence to Education
and Skills Select Committee
5th May 2004
John Sykes - Principal Engineer (Transport
Policy) Hertfordshire
County Council
1.0. Biographical details
1.1. Since
1974, John Sykes has had a wide and diverse career working for
Hertfordshire County Council. Starting out as a secondary school
teacher he was seconded in 1989 to work for the advisory service
alongside the County Police Authority to help develop a school
based police liaison programme. This subsequently led him into
partnership work with the County Road Safety Unit with whom he
later project managed a joint DoT/Local Authority "good practice"
programme for improving school - based road safety education.
From there he moved into his current role of Transport Policy
Manager, which includes specific
responsibility for the department's Local Transport
Plan, Performance Indicators, TravelWise initiative and School
Travel Plan Co-ordinators.
1.2. He has been involved
in several research programmes looking at ways to improve travel
awareness programmes with schools and the wider community, developing
ways in which such programmes can be linked with pupil's health,
independence and safety.
1.3. He has represented
the authority on the DfT School Travel Advisory Group (STAG) and
on the recently formed School Travel Expert Panel.
2. 0 Background to Hertfordshire County Council
(HCC) school
travel plan work
2.1. Hertfordshire
began working on school travel issues in 1996
and has already engaged with about 80%
(515) of its schools (total number 635) as part of its travel
plan development work.
2.2.
Within the travel plan work the Council effectively has two
different levels of working with schools
- those selected for safer routes work receive intensive input,
whilst other schools receive support to develop travel plans,
assistance with travel plan initiatives and some minor engineering
work where appropriate. As Hertfordshire's experience has increased,
they have placed increasing emphasis on school travel plans, and
believe that embedding school travel work in both the policy of
individual schools, and also the policy documents of the council,
is vital to its future.
2.3. In terms of results,
indications are that perhaps 80% of the
schools that have been involved in safer
routes to school work have achieved reductions in car use. Meanwhile,
casualties on the journey to school have decreased by 25% (including
an 18% reduction in pedestrian casualties).
2.4.
Hertfordshire has also been involved in research projects, which
have shown the exercise benefits of not driving to school and
the changes in attitudes that can result from the annual Walk
to School Week. They are currently interested in developing a
year-round marketing campaign about school travel issues based
on three key issues of safety, health and independence.
3.0. Scale of school travel work
3.1. The
stated objectives of the school travel strategy are:
·
to reduce child casualties;
·
to reduce car journeys to school;
·
to provide sustainable transport modes.
3.2. The
original school travel plan targets set in 1996 were:
·
That 10% of schools should have a school travel plan by 2005 and
30% of schools would be working towards having a school travel
plan.
·
That 65% of pupils should travel to school by sustainable means
by 2005. (The 2002/3 County Travel Survey suggested that the current
proportion travelling by sustainable means is 59%, but more robust
monitoring data is being sought).
3.3. However,
since appointing extra school travel plan co-ordinators
using the recent DfT/DfES funding, the
target is to have school travel plans in place in 40% of all schools
by 2006.
4.0 Bus Travel initiatives
4.1. Under
current legislation the local authority has managed to
promote a number of school bus-related
initiatives. Theses include;
- A number of dedicated home to school
routes serving those pupils predominately outside of the statutory
entitlement. This is at a cost to the Environment Department of
about £1.7m per year addressing some 1.3m journeys per annum.
This service is in addition to that funded through the Education
Department for "entitled" students.
- A half price saver card ticket (annual
cost of ticket -£5) for around 10,000 students between 14
-18 years of age, which can be used on all services through the
week and at weekends. The funding of this scheme is around £1.3m
per year.
- A "free" bus identity
card scheme for 11-13 year old students that allows them to travel
for half fare at all times on local bus services.
- A pilot rail card scheme for 16
-19-year-old students being developed through the authority's
INTALINK partnership with local train operators.
- The production of a "Code of
Conduct" in partnership with local operators and schools
to help reduce vandalism on school coaches
- The introduction of escort training
and driver training to help manage the interaction with school
aged pupils on the school run.
- The introduction of CCTV on some
of the school coaches
5.0. Other research programmes
5.1. Hertfordshire
have been involved in a research project in
collaboration with UCL, about the health
issues associated with travelling to school, and with initiatives
such as the walking bus. This work has involved 149 children from
Hertfordshire schools from years 6 (age 10/11) and 8 (age 12/13).
These children were fitted with activity monitors, and monitored
over a 4-day period.
5.2.
Key results of this work are as follows:
· children
are typically over 20% less active on weekend days compared to
weekdays which may partly reflect the lack of travelling to school
· a
typical one-way trip to school by car (18 activity calories) gives
less than half the amount of exercise of travelling by bus (40
activity calories) or on foot (48 activity calories)
· on
average, children gain 9% of their physical activity travelling
to and from school
· on
average, children use more calories travelling to or from school
than they do from two hours of PE. This is particularly true for
older children who do not travel to school by car.
· About
half of the children on walking buses were previously travelling
by car.
5.3. Hertfordshire
have also been involved in the TAPESTRY EU
project, which included an assessment
of their walk to school week campaign, as carried out in May 2002.
This campaign was delivered into 147 separate schools reaching
almost 60,000 schoolchildren and their parents. Evaluation was
conducted at 11 schools that received the campaign and two control
schools. The schools receiving the campaign this year had also
done so last year, whilst the control schools had never participated
in walk to school week. Analysis was conducted via a before and
after survey. In total, about 1000 completed surveys were received
from campaign schools, with a further 200 from control schools.
5.4.
The evaluation survey adopted a seven-stage model of behaviour
change. It found that the campaign made little difference to people's
awareness of traffic problems or their sense of responsibility
for them, which is probably because high levels of awareness had
already been achieved via the Walk to School Week programme. However,
it did have some impact on how they perceived and evaluated different
options, and whether they were prepared to increase the amount
that they walked.
6.0. Innovative work
Hertfordshire believe that they gained
their status as a Centre of Excellence partly through their innovative
school travel work. They feel that their work in theatre in education,
on health issues (c.f. UCL/EPSRC project) on marketing (c.f. TAPESTRY
project) safer routes to school and young persons' "saver
cards" provides good evidence for this award.
7.0. Recommendations.
7.1 . The
authority welcomes the progress that has been made by Government
to establish school travel planning work in an attempt to reduce
peak hour congestion on local roads. However, within the draft
School Transport Bill, further consideration may need to be made
through the pilot schemes in order to establish:
- Clear limits on walking and cycling
limits based on age
- A legal definition of a "safe
route"
- Source of revenue funding to help
"pump prime " the pilot projects
- Financial support for school travel
plan support beyond 2006
- More flexible use of local transport
plan funds to support revenue projects e.g. improvement in bus
provision, cycle training etc
8.0 References
TAPESTRY project papers,
Hertfordshire case study, CD-ROM, September 2003.
The health benefits of walking to
school, RL Mackett, L Lucas,
J Paskins & J Turbin, paper for the SUSTRANS national conference,
Leicester, September 2003.
School travel strategies and plans,
P Osborne & D Pontefract, report for the DETR, DETR, London,
1999.
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