Social distancing resources
We have completed deliveries to all local authority schools. This comprised of banners and stencils and spray paint to paint markers on the pavement to encourage social distancing. We hope that this small gesture has been a help to all of our schools and nurseries.
The paint is available on Amazon, but it must be the same formulation. We believe it lasts about 4 to 6 weeks, so come September you will probably need to repaint these.
Win a scooter for tweeting
As a little extra incentive, please can you take a picture of your banner on your fences and the stencil shapes on the pavement. We would really appreciate it if you could Tweet this or add to your Facebook with the tag: @haringeycouncil
We will be choosing one school at random from all of the tweets/messages and we will award a lovely new Micro Speed + scooter worth about £130. Obviously, this could also be a great raffle prize to raise money for your school to buy more or an incentive to keep someone motivated. Plus, we will send four schools a selection of travel related goodies, for prizes and incentives.
Email or tweet to be in the draw! We will announce the winner on Friday 3 July and prizes will be delivered the following week.
Cycling
There is no news about cycle training at this time, sorry – Covid19 has put a stop to this too. Please, while there are so few children in school, encourage them all to bring their bikes and scooters in and encourage them to practice at break and lunch times. Please make disinfectant spray available to cyclists to help eliminate any virus on their bikes when they park them at school.
Support for families and staff with cycling
There are some really good websites that can help parents with teaching their children to ride a bike, such as this one: https://activeforlife.com/how-to-teach-your-child-ride-bike/
If you would like some of our cycle training books, please email: smarter.travel@haringey.gov.uk
Also please send out the information about Peddle My Wheels (PMW), Try Before You Bike
We work with PMW to offer our residents options to own their own bikes and get bikes for their children on a pay monthly scheme.
Finally, we are not able to offer bike maintenance at the moment, but maybe this booklet could help your parents and staff Bike Maintenance Made Ridiculously Easy or Halfords are offering a free bike checks (chargeable service).
Staff paid by Haringey Council are eligible to get a bike through the enhanced (up to £2,000) Cycle to work scheme too.
Road safety and transition
We are concerned that this crisis has meant our year 6 pupils have received little transition information yet, so two exciting bits of news for you are:
Our Moving Up book has been updated and TfL have approved it, as well as the new and exciting Mission Transition competition. We will be delivering these to your schools as soon as they arrive. The competition entry date is by the end of September, but we hope you can work on them in school this term. Kindly confirm how many year 6 students you have with you, so we bring the right numbers.
The London Transport team has created a fabulous online version of the Safety and Citizenship road show which they normally deliver to year 6 students. This is available to students on the TfL STARS website. Please show the children how they can access this. Either search TfL STARS or use this link: https://stars.tfl.gov.uk/
Additional supporting activities
If you are looking for a great activity to complete with your year 6 pupils the Distraction activity on STARS is simple but very effective. There are many other activities suitable for your students including journey planning.
You will also find excellent resources on line via Think Education. These offer amazing support for all ages with downloadable exercises to cover the essential road safety messages.
Look up – TfL STARS and choose: Explore, then, Activities, these are free to use and download, contact us for more support or resources to help deliver these, such as borough maps, maybe some prizes.
As we approach the summer holidays, we hope that you are able to deliver some reminders to your pupils.
The Green Cross Code is the key to every successful road crossing, for all ages. The more we get this message in, the more it sticks.
Maybe the children can choose their own activity, it is a very safe website to use and any activities that you carry out will add to your School Travel Plan accreditation for TfL STARS too, just send evidence to your school travel plan teacher or back to us to upload. Smarter.travel@haringey.gov.uk subject: STARS Evidence.
School Streets
We will be contacting schools that have highlighted issues to let you know what the engineers have designed to make the improvements at your school. There will need to be further consultation with you and your neighbouring residents, as well as the pupils. These major changes will affect the whole community, we feel, for the better as they aim to make the area safer and more attractive for families.
This will be a long term change and we cannot deliver all immediately, but we are committed to change. Our team will be contacting the first round of schools soon.
Your Active Travel and Health Officers at Smarter Travel
Smarter.travel@haringey.gov.uk