The winners of our competitions encouraging pupils to use active travel to get to school have been announced.
To help encourage Medway’s young people to use active travel to get to school, we ran a competition for primary schools, Little Trekkers, and secondary schools, Striders.
The challenges took place for two weeks in October during International Walk to School Month and encouraged pupils across Medway to travel to and from school in a fun and active way to help create long-term green travel habits.
In the Little Trekkers category, New Road Primary School saw the highest number of pupils use active travel during the challenge with a whopping 79.8 per cent, winning the top prize of a £500 Halfords gift voucher.
St Margaret’s at Troy Town CE Primary School clinched second place winning a £300 Halfords gift voucher, and Deanwood Primary School secured third place and a £200 Halford gift voucher.
In the Striders category, Thomas Aveling recorded the highest percentage of active travel journeys and won a £500 Halfords gift voucher.
Pupils and staff from Thomas Aveling with their prizes.
Each of the winning schools also received a personalised framed certificate from us. All schools who took part in the challenge will receive an e-certificate in recognition of their participation and support of active travel.
Schools that took part monitored how many of their pupils travelled to school by walking, using their wheelchair, cycling, scooting or by park and stride (walking the last 10 minutes of the journey).
Big benefits for everyone
Cllr Simon Curry, Medway Council’s Portfolio Holder for Climate Change and Strategic Regeneration, including Highways, said: “I would like to congratulate the winners of the competitions that we ran, but also every single person who took part. Using active travel to get to school when possible has big benefits for everyone – not only does it encourage our younger residents to be even more active, but it leads to less cars being on our roads so we see environmental benefits as well.”
Our Sustainable Transport Team focuses on road safety education, public transport and active travel initiatives. The team encourage a number of active travel to school initiatives throughout the year, including Walk on Wednesday, Bikeability, Modeshift STARS and the Walkin’ N Wheelin’ challenge. Road Safety Officers also visit schools throughout the year to teach children valuable lessons about crossing the road, road safety rules, independent travel and more. So far in November and December this year, the team have visited 720 pupils across Medway’s schools.