ROAD SAFETY AND SOCIAL INCLUSION
Case Study i) - Sports Scotland Road Safety Initiative
INVERCLYDE
Background
Inverclyde Council Road Safety Unit, Education Department and the Police have formed a working group to address road safety within the Inverclyde area. Through this working group, links between education and road safety have led to a project involving Sports Scotland, bringing together health, sport, safety and education.
Sports Scotland are currently piloting its ' Active Primary School Co-ordinators' initiative in five areas throughout Scotland - Inverclyde, Perth and Kinross, Stirling, East Lothian and West Lothian. The overall aim of the co-ordinators is to promote healthy activity among primary school pupils. However, each co-ordinator is encouraged to set their own priorities and aims, within general guidelines provided by Sports Scotland. As a result, the co-ordinator in the Inverclyde region has focussed strongly on promoting road safety in conjunction with active walking and cycling, whereas the other four areas have concentrated on other issues.
The Sports Scotland representative works in seven 'New Community Schools' in Inverclyde. Community Schools were launched in Scotland in 1999, and are aimed at raising standards and tackling social exclusion. They aim to bring additional resources to disadvantaged areas, and provide a range of services including education, social work, family support and health education and promotion services.
A key aim of the Community Schools initiative is to ensure that expert advice is on hand within the schools, rather than a system of referrals to other agencies. Within Inverclyde, two secondary and ten primary schools are community schools.
Stimulus
As the Co-ordinator was keen to promote road safety linked with healthy walking and cycling, a pilot survey, using a questionnaire was carried out in two primary schools in order to gather parents' and pupils' views about travelling to school.
The questionnaires used were based on the 'Safer Routes to Schools' brochure, are very simple, asking about preferences for travelling to school, and factors affecting how pupils travel. Pupils were asked two questions, one asking how they travelled to school in the morning, and one asking how they would like to travel to and from school. Although the responses showed that no children travelled to school by bike, the pupils indicated that 54 per cent would like to travel to and from school in this way. In addition, at least 50 per cent of children who travelled by car would prefer not to, with only 10 per cent of children indicating that they would most like to travel by car.
A questionnaire was also distributed to the parents at the two schools. Although one school had a relatively small response rate of 16 per cent for the parent questionnaire, Ravenscraig Primary School had a more positive response rate of 64 per cent. This is seen as an unusually high response rate by the Co-ordinator, and suggests that road safety is a major issue for the parents at this school.
The Ravenscraig Primary School results highlighted that although 75 per cent of children live within one mile of the school, 46 per cent travel to school and 38 per cent from school, by car. Parents were asked to identify the main factors, which determined whether their child would be allowed to walk or cycle to school:
- 80% of parents felt that safe crossing facilities on busy roads would influence how their child travelled to school.
- 62% suggested vehicle speed reducing measures would influence them.
- 45% felt that more road safety education for children would affect their travelling methods.
- 20% indicated that information on the health and environmental benefits of walking and cycling would affect their travel arrangements.
Additional factors included weather conditions, distance between school and home and dangerous parking in streets near the school.
Project Design
Due to this questionnaire response, indicating that road safety concerns were centrally linked to travel methods to and from school, the Co-ordinator teamed up with the Inverclyde road safety unit to develop sessions on road safety for parents and pupils in all seven schools. A Road Safety Awareness day is planned for each of the seven schools, with sessions for each primary class throughout the day, and a drop in time for parents. In addition, information nights will be held for parents, with the road safety department, Sports Scotland Active Schools Co-ordinator and the local Police. The sessions are currently being developed for holding the Awareness days in September, with the overall aim of increasing the percentage of children walking or cycling to school.
Project Links
In conjunction with the Road Safety Awareness days, the road safety unit at Inverclyde council is currently developing leaflets for the schools in the area, containing maps detailing safe crossing points, bus bays, pupils' drop off points, and school crossing patrols. The leaflet also contains some basic road safety advice and is intended for distribution to both parents and visitors to the school. The leaflet was first developed for the new Gourock Primary School. The leaflet was popular and there is now demand for leaflets to be produced for all schools in Inverclyde. This is a major task, and for the time being the road safety department are focussing on five community schools identified under social inclusion criteria.
Future Plans
Within the Inverclyde area, the Active Primary School Co-ordinator has identified road safety and healthy walking and cycling as a major priority between now and August 2004. After the pupil road safety sessions, parent 'drop in' sessions, and information nights, a key aim is to focus on increasing the number of children walking to school. This will be done in part through the promotion of walking buses. However, the Inverclyde road safety department has some reservations about walking buses, largely due to responsibility and insurance reasons, and is unwilling to take responsibility for organising the walking buses. Instead, the Co-ordinator and road safety unit aims to involve the Parent and Teacher Associations (PTAs) in organising walking buses. Parents will be trained in road safety and safer routes, so that they can organise the buses among themselves. Once the number of children walking to school increases significantly, the Co-ordinator will begin to focus on promoting safe cycling.
The Sports Scotland project as a whole is also expanding, with Sports Scotland taking on another 25 School Co-ordinators, to work within different areas of Scotland. Whether road safety will be an important aspect of these new projects, will be largely dependent on the individual priorities of each local project.