Last week saw a highly successful Bike & Walk to School Week, supporting sustainable and active travel.

All staff and pupils were encouraged by our Year 10, 11 and 12 Eco Reps to help the environment by walking, cycling, scooting or taking public transport to school. Active travel can bring environmental, health and economic benefits – reducing our emissions lowers the amount of nitrogen dioxide and CO2 to tackle climate change and reduce global warming and extinction of some animals. There are many benefits of active travel for young people for example, 15 minutes of exercise can improve a child’s mood. Research shows that active travel makes children more alert and ready to face the school day than if they arrived in a car.

Everyone was encouraged to register at reception to log their mode of transport, with the year group with the most participants at Senior School winning a tasty free breakfast for the whole year! The Year 8s managed to repeat their success from last time and emerged as the winners, but only just! They narrowly beat Year 7 by just FOUR journeys over the week! 

At Junior School, all participants received a sticker with the class with the best active travel superpowers to receive a free breakfast! The winners were 5C! Also very worthy of a mention is Class 4F who ALL travelled to school on foot, by bicycle or by scooting on Wednesday! In each class more than 75% of Junior School students chose a more active or eco-friendly way of travelling to school each day during the week. This is a definite increase from other weeks where the most popular form of transport is by car.

We enjoyed seeing our school community share their active travel journeys with us – from Year 2 cycling, Year 5 scooting and combining the tube with walking, to Year 10s cycling in from Chiswick. Our teachers also got in on the active travel act. Year 4 class teacher Mrs Beetge lives approx. 6.5 miles from school and usually travels to school by car. Inspired by the effort her class made during the week, she came to school by bus and walking.  Meanwhile, Ms Blenkinsop from our senior chemistry department cycled 45 miles to school during the week to help support our week.   

We were delighted to receive some lovely tweets from @EalingSTARS on our efforts too! You can read them here and here. EalingSTARS is the School Travel Team for Ealing Council; helping schools achieve TfL STARS accreditation – encouraging & enabling active, responsible & safe travel.

As Mrs Beetge said, “We are all learning together how everyone’s small changes  can have a BIG impact on the environment.”