Rethinking the school run

fasttalkerchat

Can't see cycling working. Can you imagine 50 kids on bikes tearing through a crowded path when the school gates open? Even worse if they're on the roads in heavy traffic.

etchyed

bk wrote: »

One idea I've seen used in the US, is walking groups, an adult (parent or teacher) who walks to the school and picks up kids on the route to the school. Reduces concerns about abductions, etc.

http://www.greenschoolsireland.org/travel/the-walking-bus.600.html

Seaswimmer

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

Can't see cycling working. Can you imagine 50 kids on bikes tearing through a crowded path when the school gates open? Even worse if they're on the roads in heavy traffic.

Ah but if the 50 kids are on the road in heavy traffic then the traffic is less heavy as presumably their parents are not on the school run..

I notice far more kids cycling in certain areas. I cycle southside to northside every morning and the numbers cycling on the northside are much greater..

I put this down to the fact that northside kids go to their local schools while southside kids in my area travel to private schools which are further away from them.

If everyone went to their local school then the problem would be greatly reduced..

dowlingm

There was a programme a while back here at one Toronto school. The cops had a speed gun and there was a group of kids as well. If you were speeding but not beyond a certain amount, you had an option - take the speeding ticket and fine or listen to the kids lecture you on road safety. Obviously if you were way over the limit that option wouldn't be offered as it would not meet the seriousness of the offence.

Incidentally my wife (training to be a lawyer) is horrified every time I remind her that in Ireland paying the fine and accepting the points is basically a plea bargain with higher penalties if you lose in court. It's hard to get a road safety culture here when so many people are clogging up the courts hoping to get their case thrown out because of a failure to appear as witness by the arresting officer, and even if they lose will not incur more than the original fine/punishment.

foggy_lad

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

Can't see cycling working. Can you imagine 50 kids on bikes tearing through a crowded path when the school gates open? Even worse if they're on the roads in heavy traffic.

Way Waaay back when I was in 2nd class in national school the teacher had a bike week which was preceded by road safety week and school crossing week!


In the bike week all children who had bikes had to bring them to school even if it meant their parents carrying the bike, no excuses were entertained(that's what we were led to believe anyway). when we were being thought to ride our bikes by this gifted teacher Mrs O'Brien those with bikes were encouraged to lend their bikes to those without so that they could also learn. we were thought to control our bikes at slow speeds at junctions etc and we all enjoyed the lessons, a few weeks later every boy in the class living local to the school was cycling to school on all types of bicycle.

Between all the road safety and bike safety we did it took up maybe 2-4 hours a week for us but probably a couple of lunchtimes for the teacher who spent her lunch putting out cones in the yard.

There was never a crowd of children tearing out the gate because there was always proper supervision and back then you would have to see the headmaster and possibly feel the cane on your hand if you didn't do what any teacher told you to do. Back them we did what we were told by those in charge without openly questioning, much like we do here with the mods.

n97 mini

MYOB wrote: »

Two things need to be done

1: The ridiculous weight of schoolbags these days needs to be sorted first, as its often actually not safe to carry all the required equipment.

You'll be delighted to know Kildare VEC is rolling out iPads to secondary schools from this September. Non-optional, you have to buy a new one even if you have one already, and it has to be an Apple iPad.

As books are now e-books, they cost "only" €350.

Total cost to parents €850. Credit Unions are doing "low cost" 6% loans to those who can't afford them.

L1011

n97 mini wrote: »

You'll be delighted to know Kildare VEC is rolling out iPads to secondary schools from this September. Non-optional, you have to buy a new one even if you have one already, and it has to be an Apple iPad.

As books are now e-books, they cost "only" €350.

Total cost to parents €850. Credit Unions are doing "low cost" 6% loans to those who can't afford them.

Why am I not surprised?

That wasn't quite the approach I was thinking of, more a return to books that aren't 75% glossy colour images with big text and seperate 'workbooks'.

Or state-commissioned and hence free PDFs that'll work on a 99 quid Android yoke, if we went down the electronic route.

The having to buy a new one regardless screams backhander to me.

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

Can't see cycling working. Can you imagine 50 kids on bikes tearing through a crowded path when the school gates open? Even worse if they're on the roads in heavy traffic.

There won't be a queue of bikes 'when the school gates open' as that hasn't been how school days have ended for the best part of 40 years. Particularly in secondary schools, where not every year/class will be in for the final period, there's a hugely dispersed campus in many cases, and you need to unlock the bike from storage.

n97 mini

MYOB wrote: »

The having to buy a new one regardless screams backhander to me.

The whole thing does. I've asked Kildare VEC for information regarding the selection of Apple products. No answer as yet.

L1011

I'd be tempted to throw an FOI in although the fees are ridiculous now.

foggy_lad

n97 mini wrote: »

You'll be delighted to know Kildare VEC is rolling out iPads to secondary schools from this September. Non-optional, you have to buy a new one even if you have one already, and it has to be an Apple iPad.

As books are now e-books, they cost "only" €350.

Total cost to parents €850. Credit Unions are doing "low cost" 6% loans to those who can't afford them.

Some parents will have to fork out for three or more of these iPads, who is getting commission on the sales for all these iPads? There is definitely someone making a mint from this here as the Dail recently provided iPads for all members.

Victor

MYOB wrote: »

For anywhere bar close suburbs of cities, hinterlands distort the figures. Maynooth PP serves a vast area of rural south Meath and some kildare villages which are all over 5 km away from the school, which itself is positioned well to one side of the town and planning on moving further out. Even very large provincial towns would match this

Not really, the statistic is more about where people live than where the school is. It is about people in the continuous urban area of each of the towns - not people in the next town, that is unless there is ribbon development joining the two.

Deleted User wrote: »

What I don't understand is how the traffic is so badly affected by school runs. The M1 Southbound from junction 4 is completely different depending on whether or not the schools are in and I just have to wonder how many people are not only sending their kids to a school that far away and then spending 1-2 hours a day driving them there and back.

Some workers schedule their leave around the school holidays. Many people are more likely to walk/cycle or use public transport during the summer. You will have fewer pupils driving also.

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

Can't see cycling working. Can you imagine 50 kids on bikes tearing through a crowded path when the school gates open? Even worse if they're on the roads in heavy traffic.

But this happens perfectly safely at many schools.

Aard

Victor wrote: »

One can understand why these towns have such low percentages - the towns are growing rapidly and haven't had secondary schools until now - I think the one in Donabate opened in 2011-2012. I imagine the small percentages present will account primarily for children who were coming to an end of primary school, but were 13 by April 2011 when the census was done.

But for this list, one really has to wonder why 35-50% of the children attend a school not in the town (or indeed city) / more than 5km away - understandable in fast growing towns, but not established ones.

A lot of parents do not want to send their kids to the nearest school. My secondary school was an Irish school, which had a huge catchment area as there were not many of them around. I think there are about five in the city. I'd well believe that half the kids lived over 5km away -- it was not uncommon for people to come in from Wicklow every day.

dowlingm

Here's a PPT on the iPad in Kildare trial last year. As it's not C&T related I will give full vent to the rage I suffered reading it, except to say that here in Canada, parents don't buy books. School districts do, and any gadget that replaces books the same.

Victor

For the whole state

Students who travel less than 1km to school: 1,161

Students who travel more than 50km to school (not necessarily daily): 1,843

Richard Logue

One approach used here in the UK is to establish "School travel plans" to encourage newly established schools to consider approved walking/cycling routes. A new school near us has established a walking bus route where volunteer parents meet groups of children at fixed points on their way to school and back.

Iwannahurl

Good subject for a thread. I've only just seen it, though, so I can't respond to the many interesting points raised.

This was in the Irish Times Health+Family supplement today:

According to the Department of Transport, over half of primary school children in Ireland live within 1km of school, with two out of three living within 2km. Taking into consideration secondary schools, over half of all school children live no more than a 20-30-minute walk away (2km), while 80 per cent live within 5km which is only a short cycle away. Yet under 40 per cent of our schoolchildren walk or cycle to school.

Also:

Iwannahurl wrote: »

From the Irish Heart Foundation's 2010 report, Building Young Hearts:

Findings from the 2006 Census echo the reduction in active travel modes to school. Between 1991 and 2006 walking and cycling decreased while travel by car increased. 25% travel less than 1km, 36% travel between 2-4km and 60% of parents who drop off by car don’t go to work.*

Assuming all the above figures are correct, it is simply absurd that so many children are driven to school rather than take the bus, walk or cycle.

One or two issues raised in this thread caught my eye.

Heavy schoolbags may well be a universal problem (eg see this Dutch TV report) but is it really so bad in Ireland that it results in massive car use and car dependence? There are children in my neighbourhood travelling 800 metres to the same primary school with presumably the same weight of books, yet some opt for the car and some walk. The video above discusses the weight of schoolbags but in the background droves of children are seen cycling, whereas here they would be walking a few metres to a car parked up on the footpath.

Illegal parking around schools is a very important issue and a very vexed question, in my experience. I was discussing this with another parent recently, as it happens one who cycles a fair bit, including with child on board. I was amazed to hear her say that she thought it a "fundamentalist" and "selfish" position to expect car-driving parents to obey road traffic law outside schools and to insist that cyclists be facilitated by measures such as not making it illegal (with one-way street restrictions) for children to cycle to school by the most convenient route. There seems to be a deeply-ingrained mindset that somehow regards walking as the choice of a few eccentric people with a lot of time on their hands, and that busy people with important things to do cannot be expected to give up either space or time to accommodate them, even if the law is being broken.

The road safety arguments have some merit, perhaps. This is James Wickham's perspective, in his book Gridlock:

The falling number of children who walk to school is symptomatic of the vicious circle of car dependence. Parents worry about their children's safety, so they drive their children to school. Consequently children lose the skills to use roads safely and at the same time there are now more cars on the roads, making the roads more dangerous. Once it becomes 'normal' for children to be driven to school, the distance between home and school increases, so that soon many children are living too far away from school to walk there.

I would have to disagree with that last sentence, since the DoT figures quoted earlier tell a different story regarding actual travel distances. My view would be that much car use is habitual, and that routine driving increases the perceived distance between home and school. Successive generations are taking to the car and losing a sense of what distances can be reasonably covered on foot or by bike.

There's more to it than that, of course. The psychology of car dependence is complex, for a start.

Carawaystick

[Deleted User] wrote: »

What I don't understand is how the traffic is so badly affected by school runs. The M1 Southbound from junction 4 is completely different depending on whether or not the schools are in and I just have to wonder how many people are not only sending their kids to a school that far away and then spending 1-2 hours a day driving them there and back.

I think a large part of this is due to parents going on holidays during school holidays, and not going to work, as opposed to bringing children on a school run

Iwannahurl

Carawaystick wrote: »

I think a large part of this is due to parents going on holidays during school holidays, and not going to work, as opposed to bringing children on a school run

For 2-3 months?

Victor

Iwannahurl wrote: »

For 2-3 months?

Yes. All those school and college staff and people who do flexi-time and/or can work from home.

Iwannahurl

The number of school staff is obviously tiny compared to the number of parents.

As for Third Level staff, they're supposed to be working. University lecturers, for example, do not get 2-3 months holidays, ttbomk. Admins get normal holidays like everyone else. In any case, the number of college students is greater than the number of lecturers and admins, so that doesn't entirely explain the reduced traffic outside of the school term.

I doubt that flexi-time and working from home accounts for a large part of the traffic reduction either.

hardCopy

fasttalkerchat wrote: »

Can't see cycling working. Can you imagine 50 kids on bikes tearing through a crowded path when the school gates open? Even worse if they're on the roads in heavy traffic.

Happened every single day in my school in the mid 90's. We had at least 200 cyclists in and out the gate every morning and evening and a smaller number at lunchtime.

The only rule we needed was that everyone had to walk their bike to the gate.

It was never a problem bar the odd complaint from neighbours about kids cycling on the path.

galwaycyclist

Victor wrote: »

Yes. All those school and college staff and people who do flexi-time and/or can work from home.

Ok I am extrapolating from personal experience - which has its pitfalls.

I work with, or know of, several people who work flexitime or work from home. However, in all cases known to me, this involves working from home one or more days a week. Or working shorter weeks than standard or slightly different shift times. I have never come across anyone who can work from home for weeks or months at a time or who can take all their "flexitime" in one or two blocks.