Category: Smarter Travel

Starting back for the last term of a very strange year. Our messages remain the same: keep your distance and keep safe.

TfL competition for all schools – May deadline

Competition: The Big Change | London Transport Museum (ltmuseum.co.uk)

The competition

For this competition, we want you to get creative and make something that shows how you can make big changes to how you travel to help improve the quality of the environment or your life.

You can choose any form, such as:

• Art: such as a poster, sculpture or collage
• Film: a short film or animation*
• Writing: such as a poem or short story

The competition is open to all London school children and there are four age categories:

• Under 7s
• 8-10
• 11-14
• 15-18

Cycle training

We are pleased to inform you that we are now able to offer free cycle training once again for intermediate level cyclists.  Secondary school staff in particular, please take advantage of this golden opportunity to provide your pupils with a healthier, more sustainable and cost free method of travelling to school. You can book a training session by contacting www.cycleconfident.com or call 020 3031 6730  They will work with your pupils to provide them with the confidence and knowledge to cycle safely on their journeys to and from school.

There is lots happening– here are some important dates:

April

Road safety – as your school resumes, and trips are back on the curriculum, make sure your teachers promote the Green Cross Code this is not just an infant message, the worst statistics involve  teenagers as they are easily distracted with their phones and music and friends.

Sustrans The Big Pedal  – 17 April

Many Haringey Schools are already committed to this. It is a free, fun way to encourage activity and start shifting the lockdown cobwebs. In 2019 Rokesly School came second in the country!

Sustrans Big Pedal 2021

School Streets – our first batch of schools will have their pedestrian and walking/scooting zones launched outside their schools.

May

Haringey Public Health team launching their month long Spring competition.

17- 21 May is Walk to School Week,

Primary schools that have agreed to take part will be receiving their Walk To School Week packs. Theme is Walking Super heroes

Let us know if you want to be a launch school for this.  We have some super hero capes and masks!!!

Junior Travel Ambassadors

The Junior Travel Ambassador (JTA) scheme encourages peer-to-peer engagement and will give you and your school all the resources and guidance you need to promote safer, active and independent travel within the school community. It’s a fun and engaging way to spread important messages and build skills for life.

Transition to Secondary School

Every year 6 pupil will receive a copy of our Moving Up magazine and the Mission Transition competition (win a bike),  plus transition lesson plans, maps and our support is offered to schools.

Your STARS School Travel Plan

This is vital to maintain your accreditation.

Evidence needs to be uploaded to STARS. Every trip, message about active travel, road safety, air quality. Walk to school week, The Golden Lock, cycle training, STARS training, The Big Pedal, School street. All is great evidence.  Message us for help smarter.travel@haringey.gov.uk

MAPS – 10 minute walk zones

We are currently making every school a bespoke walking cycling map we will send these to each school. These can be printed or sent to everyone by email. We will be adding them to the existing maps on our webpage School Journeys and can be download. We are sure you will find them useful.

The Smarter Travel Team

Join our Healthy Streets Officer for a TfL STARS champion online forum 

Georgia, our Healthy Streets Officer and her colleagues across London are hosting an online forum for STARS champions next week: 12pm Tuesday 16 March.

The free event is open to all schools in Haringey. You will have a chance to share ideas and learn about activities, with other schools across London.

Sign up here

This first session will cover:

• Helping Champions get comfortable with STARS
• Role of a School Travel Champion
• How to write up a STARS story
• What is a Hands Up survey and why it is used?
• Completing a Hands Up survey
• Information on the Big Pedal campaign
• Q & A session

The Big Pedal

Registration is now open for this year’s Big Pedal! This is the UK’s biggest inter-school cycling, walking, wheeling and scooting competition. Join in for one, five or ten days between 19 and 30 April 2021 to be in with a chance of winning fabulous prizes every day.

Find out more of sign up here.

Please remember to book your school’s free cycle training now, not just primary schools, secondary schools can book sessions too – www.cycleconfident.com

School Travel Planning

As your parents are bringing their children back to school, please remind them that we need our young people to increase their activity, so the Daily Mile can be achieved by their walk to and from school every day. This will contribute to reduced pollution, increased road safety awareness and fitter healthier families.

We are aiming for all schools to complete their Hands up survey before the end of this half term.

If you need help please take time to look at the TfL Stars Site and sign up for the following:

Any questions please contact us at Smarter.travel@haringey.gov.uk

The Smarter Travel Team

Dear School Travel Champions, Head Teachers and PSHE Leads,

Cycle Training Update – What cycle training can take place?

The Department for Education has confirmed that Bikeability cycle training can take place in schools for vulnerable children and children of critical workers subject to the measures described in their guidance, and at Headteacher discretion. It can also be provided as wraparound care and extracurricular activity outside of the school day. Read the government guidance for schools (updated 7 January 2021) here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/actions-for-schools-during-the-coronavirus-outbreak.

Pre book your school’s cycle training courses for the spring/summer terms by contacting Cycle Confident at www.cycleconfident.com or call 0203 031 6730

(Training is suitable for 9yrs to adult

Complete a Free Online Cycle Training Course and get 15% off in Halfords!

Even while in lockdown, with the absence of physical training sessions, you can brush up on your Cycle Skills via the TfL online course.

Whether you’re popping to the shops or going to work, there’s never been a better time to cycle.

TfL’s free online Cycle Skills course will help you to cycle safely and confidently. So, whether you’re new to cycling or just want to brush up on your skills, we can help you take to the road.

Schools, please send this link out along with the TfL Stars link to promote these activities that will benefit your school parents and staff

Sustrans Big Pedal is back 19 – 30 April 2021

This is the link to this year’s cycling/scootering/walking campaign https://bigpedal.org.uk/ For this campaign you need to register on their website.

So far they are boasting that 461 schools registered 157,000 pupils taking part in this year’s Big Pedal. (3 Haringey School. Let us know if you are registering, we may have resources to help you make this an amazing activity. (The Golden Lock prizes still available)

Living Streets’ Walk to School Week 17 – 21 May 2021 – Action needed now

PLEASE contact us by Thursday 25 February to receive classroom packs for your primary classes – we will only be ordering for schools that respond! They are worth £10 per class and we have to get the order placed a.s.a.p.

Email: wendy.thorogood@haringey.gov.uk with the number of ks1 and ks2 classes

What you need to do:

• Register your interest with us stating how many packs you would use. No of KS1 and KS2 packs
• Ask your head teacher to support active travel when schools re-open
• Encourage all class teachers to be involved increasing active travel to school.
• Celebrate successes.
• Register your interest with travel@haringey.gov.uk

School Streets in Haringey

This new term will see an increase in our work to implement School Street closures around many schools in Haringey. Careful consideration is given to each School Street project. We are dedicated to making changes to improve the health and safety of our pupils. Where School Street Closures are not feasible at this stage, we will be constantly searching to improve your reported school travel issues.

We urge you to continue to add all of your issues to the TfL STARS site– we regularly check this to assist our Planning and Highways Teams and support any applications for improvements that are requested by our schools. So, if the road outside your school could be improved, please upload onto this site, and maybe send us an email too. School Streets will not be delivered where the school does not fully engage with TfL STARS.

School Travel Planning – more important than ever before

Thank you for your continued hard work and dedication throughout the last year. We really appreciate your work with STARS and active travel despite the unprecedented times that we are living in.  School Street Projects can only be delivered to schools with up to date STARS accreditation. When schools re-open fully, we would love the messages to be keep walking, scooting, cycling not driving.

The schools that have not carried out a hands up survey, this is really essential for your accreditation. So please prioritise this (link to Stars). The TfL Healthy Schools officers are planning some training sessions via TEAMS/Zoom to help with STAR; let us know if you are keen to join.

This period of lockdown is proving difficult and we want to remind everyone of the importance of getting outdoors for some daily exercise. Even a short walk or cycle to break up the day while teachers, parents and pupils are working and studying at home will benefit us all and support our physical and mental wellbeing.

Please share this with families TfL Stars useful home learning activities for all year groups. https://stars.tfl.gov.uk/HomeLearning

Think! Free Road Safety resources from Think Education site.

This site offers many useful lesson plans to include in your PSHE and other lessons.

Upload evidence of using these, as it contributes to your School Travel Plan on TfL STARS too. All Free ! Road Safety Education is a life skill.

STOP – LOOK – LISTEN – THINK

Best Wishes Smarter Travel

020 8489 5351

Save the date – Living Street’s Walk to School week is 17 – 21 May 2021

We are looking at providing Living Streets packs to our schools this year. Please let us know how many packs you need so that we can look into funding the resources for you.

We hope that the COVID-19 vaccine may be giving our residents a glimpse of freedom by this time. What an amazing opportunity to help restore mental health and improve the morale of our pupils and families by joining in the national campaign to Walk to School with Living Streets! Living Streets provide supporting resources that help embed active travel to get to school.

Lots of free resources can be found here on the Living Streets website, or maybe you want to invest in their Walking Travel Tracker!

Get ahead and encourage your families back after lockdown using a healthy transport method. Their lockdown school work could include practising a walk to school and back, measuring the number of steps, or how far they would get if they added all the walks together, could they get to the beach and back? Maybe a geography or maths task?

What you need to do:

• Register your interest with us stating how KS1 and KS2 packs you will need.
• Ask your head teacher to support active travel when schools re-open.
• Encourage all classes to be involved in active travel to school.
• Celebrate successes.

Register your interest with Smarter.travel@haringey.gov.uk

Cycle Training

Complete a Free Online Cycle Training Course and get 15% off in Halfords!

Even while in lockdown, with the absence of physical training sessions, you can brush up on your cycle skills via the TfL online course. Whether you’re popping to the shops or going to work, there’s never been a better time to cycle.

TfL’s free online cycle skills course will help you to cycle safely and confidently. So whether you’re new to cycling or just want to brush up on your skills, we can help you take to the road.

What you’ll learn:

There are four modules to complete and each one takes less than five minutes:

1. Get ready to ride – gives you tips on getting you and your cycle ready for the road including basic maintenance and road handling skills
2. First time on the road – shows you how to cycle safely and responsibly and includes tips on setting off, road positioning and stopping safely
3. On the road again – helps to get you cycling again with advice on traffic lights, roundabouts and junctions, and how to share the road safely
4. Cycling with children – gives you advice on cycling in a group

On completion of the course, you’ll receive a code to redeem 15% off Halfords own-brand locks, lights and helmets! What are you waiting for? Register Now!

Please share this in your newsletters so that staff and parents can take advantage of the online training offered.

School Streets in Haringey

When schools last returned from lockdown, we saw an unsustainable increase in car use across London. We are committed to making Haringey a cleaner, safer borough and to do this, we are introducing School Streets at 20 primary schools this year.

The School Streets project will help to improve the local air quality and reduce the levels of childhood obesity in Haringey, two things which are of priority to us. By creating safe walking and cycling zones outside the school, we will facilitate more journeys to school via active modes of travel and reduce the levels of congestion from cars outside the school gates.

Everyone should be encouraged to consider their travel options and avoid driving to school where possible. Please continue your great work encouraging a healthy, active journey. Walk to School week will be a great boost this spring!

Thank you for your continued hard work and dedication throughout the past year. We really appreciate your hard work with STARS and active travel despite these unprecedented times that we are living in.

During this lockdown period we want to remind everyone of the importance of getting outdoors for some daily exercise. Even a short walk or cycle to break up the day while teachers, parents and pupils are working and studying at home will benefit us all and support our physical and mental wellbeing.

TfL Stars has some useful home learning activities for all year groups. https://stars.tfl.gov.uk/HomeLearning

Think! Have some excellent online road safety resources that can help children to think about their safety when out in their local streets. You may wish to share these with your community.

We are still here to support you throughout the lockdown!

Best Wishes
The Smarter Travel Team

Need a new bike? Try Peddle My Wheels!

Complete a Free Online Cycle Training Course and get 15% off in Halfords!

Whether you’re popping to the shops or going to work, there has never been a better time to cycle. TfL’s free online Cycle Skills course will help you to cycle safely and confidently. So whether you’re new to cycling or just want to brush up on your skills, we can help you take to the road.

What you’ll learn:

There are four modules to complete and each one takes less than five minutes:

1. Get ready to ride – gives you tips on getting you and your cycle ready for the road including basic maintenance and road handling skills
2. First time on the road – shows you how to cycle safely and responsibly and includes tips on setting off, road positioning and stopping safely
3. On the road again – helps to get you cycling again with advice on traffic lights, roundabouts and junctions, and how to share the road safely
4. Cycling with children – gives you advice on cycling in a group

On completion of the course, you’ll receive a code to redeem 15% off Halfords own-brand locks, lights and helmets! What are you waiting for?  Register Now!

 Please share this information in your school newsletters so that staff and parents can take advantage of the online training offered.

The Smarter Travel team have created this Powerpoint presentation as a simple quick way to get Bright to  Be Seen message to our  young people.

winter road safety powerpoint for primary rudolph

Maybe you could promote this with a  Be Bright day, where everyone wears something fluorescent or bright to school  – it’s a great opportunity to make people think.

Remember Rudolf was asked to help Santa as his nose lit up the way on a foggy night!

Under 18 free travel for children

As part of TfL’s recent government funding agreement, it was confirmed that the Mayor and TfL wished Londoners to continue to benefit from travel concessions for under 18s. Young people under the age of 18 can now be reassured that they will continue to benefit from free travel on buses and trams.

Enter our Be Bright Be Seen competition!

We hope that some of you made use of our Road Safety Week resources for Be Bright Be Seen. If you did and would like to win some prizes, send photos to Smarter.Travel@haringey.gov.uk We’d love to see winning photos of bright bags, coats, scooters or bikes! We’ll be picking a winning school and sending out a box of prizes so please enter by Friday 11 December.

New Resources for your Junior Travel Ambassadors!

Follow this link to the JTA programme on STARS and find many great new resources linked. Unfortunately, we don’t have and hard copies of the new booklet, but you can download the new version here.

STARS Hands Up Surveys

We are still urgently waiting for your Hands Up Survey figures. Completing your survey helps to tell us how your pupils and staff are travelling to school and will help us to assess how Covid-19 has impacted on travel behaviours. Please try to complete a survey before the Christmas break.

Contact us if you need help to access the TfL STARS website and we can send you a link to make it really easy. If you don’t have a travel champion in place, please email Smarter.Travel@haringey.gov.uk to get started.

The Golden Lock – Cycling and Scooting Prizes

We have boxes of prizes waiting for schools who want to increase the number of pupils cycling/scooting to school. We have filled them with 16 different cycle/scooter related prizes and will deliver them with instructions to run the competition.

To qualify, you must complete your hands up survey on STARS, email us and we will deliver one of our boxes. Please contact Smarter.Travel@haringey.gov.uk if you are unsure on how to get started.

Cycle Training

Our cycle training company Cycle Confident has funds from us to deliver Bikeability training. Please liaise with them to arrange bikeability for your students, we are very happy to be supporting you with cycle training once again.

Complete a Free Online Cycle Training Course and get 15% off in Halfords!

Whether you’re popping to the shops or going to work, there’s never been a better time to cycle.

TfL’s free online Cycle Skills course will help you to cycle safely and confidently. So whether you’re new to cycling or just want to brush up on your skills, we can help you take to the road.

What you’ll learn:

There are four modules to complete and each one takes less than five minutes:

• Get ready to ride – gives you tips on getting you and your cycle ready for the road including basic maintenance and road handling skills
• First time on the road – shows you how to cycle safely and responsibly and includes tips on setting off, road positioning and stopping safely
• On the road again – helps to get you cycling again with advice on traffic lights, roundabouts and junctions, and how to share the road safely
• Cycling with children – gives you advice on cycling in a group

On completion of the course, you’ll receive a code to redeem 15% off Halfords own-brand locks, lights and helmets! What are you waiting for?  Register Now!

Please share this in your newsletters so that staff and parents can take advantage of the online training offered.

This week is Road Safety Week (16 – 22 November 2020)

This week is Brake’s Road Safety Week 2020! The theme this year is No Need to Speed. Please download their free resource pack to help you deliver the messages.

There are useful resources on TfL STARS for home learning and road safety education activities plus Think! Road Safety has activities and lesson plans for all ages that can help.

Last week, we sent you some ideas for Be Bright Be Seen campaigns – these will be great to run during Road Safety Week too.

Road Safety Week

Green Cross Code

Green Cross Code Powerpoints

Stop Look Listen Bookmark

STARS Hands Up Surveys

We are still urgently waiting for your Hands Up Survey figures. This will tell us how your pupils and staff are travelling to school. We have great difficulty assisting schools when we have no records of how many people are coming to school by car.

The STARS Hands-Up Survey is easy: you send your colleagues a link to an online survey, they count how each child came to school in their class and repeat for the adults. Your Travel Champion only has to collect information from non-teaching staff and enter this too.

Call us to access the TfL Stars website or we can send you a link to make it really easy. If you don’t have a travel champion in place, please email Smarter.Travel@haringey.gov.uk to get started.

The Golden Lock – Cycling and Scooting Prizes

We have boxes of prizes waiting for schools who want to increase the number of pupils cycling/scooting to school. These are generous and make a huge impact. We have filled them with 16 different cycle/scooter related prizes and will deliver them with instructions.

To qualify, you must complete your hands up survey on STARS, email us and we will deliver one of our boxes. Please contact Smarter.Travel@haringey.gov.uk if you are unsure on how to get started.

Cycle Training

Our cycle training company Cycle Confident has funds from us to deliver Bikeability training. Please liaise with them to arrange bikeability for your students, we are very happy to be supporting you with cycle training once again.

Complete a Free Online Cycle Training Course and get 15% off in Halfords!

Whether you’re popping to the shops or going to work, there’s never been a better time to cycle.

TfL’s free online Cycle Skills course will help you to cycle safely and confidently. So whether you’re new to cycling or just want to brush up on your skills, we can help you take to the road.

What you’ll learn:

There are four modules to complete and each one takes less than five minutes:

1. Get ready to ride – gives you tips on getting you and your cycle ready for the road including basic maintenance and road handling skills
2. First time on the road – shows you how to cycle safely and responsibly and includes tips on setting off, road positioning and stopping safely
3. On the road again – helps to get you cycling again with advice on traffic lights, roundabouts and junctions, and how to share the road safely
4. Cycling with children – gives you advice on cycling in a group

On completion of the course, you’ll receive a code to redeem 15% off Halfords own-brand locks, lights and helmets! What are you waiting for?  Register Now!

Please share this in your newsletters so that staff and parents can take advantage of the online training offered.