Posted on: Thursday 26 September 2024
More pupils are walking, scooting and cycling to a school in Cwmbran since they introduced an active travel schools plan.
Llantarnam Primary School was the first in Torfaen to adopt the new generation of active travel school plan in July 2022, aimed at increasing the number of pupils who regularly travel actively to school.
Since then, the council’s active travel team has worked with the school to provide scooter storage, bike training, carry out surveys, create new active travel routes, and install a zebra crossing and additional entrances into the school.
The school has since requested additional bike storage due to the number of pupils now coming to school by bike.
Year 5 pupil Will said: "I like cycling to school because I like getting fresh air, and it helps me to keep fit."
Year 4 pupil Joseph said: "I prefer cycling to school because it’s faster than walking”.
Conner, also in Year 4, added: Sometimes I ride my bike to school, and sometimes I use my scooter. My little brother is two, and he rides his bike to school with me. I really enjoy it when we ride our bikes together."
This week, the school has also been marking Cycle to School Week.
Kate Bailey, Senior School Support Officer, said: “The active travel plan has concentrated everyone’s minds on the benefits of walking, cycling and scooting - we now talk to the children about the benefits and we encourage them to have similar conversations at home.
“We are lucky here because the council has recently developed new active travel routes leading to the schools, so parents are happy to let their children cycle along them as they are away from cars.
“As we’re a new build school, we already had bike storage but we’ve had to ask for additional storage because so many pupils now bring their bikes to school.”
According to the school’s Living Streets WOW tracker, 68 per cent of pupils have walked, scooted or cycled to school so far this month.
The council’s active travel team has supported another 13 schools in Torfaen to develop active travel school plans and is working with another three.
Read more about active travel in Torfaen