Story of a school street
Smoothies, cycles and ‘ssemblies
This week is a bit of a retrospective - back to 2019. This was the year we really had our consciousness raised on air quality by a group of parents and staff at our local Jessop primary school and haven’t looked back since.
Picture the scene
Louise is on maternity leave with her days punctuated by the 45-minute round trip to school where her older daughter is in year 3. A short chat with another parent who is about to change jobs and can no longer gather the informal group of parents campaigning on air quality and road safety. A council who are rolling out their school streets programme - piloting with Jessop the closure of nearby roads at drop off and pick up times. Louise was hooked!
The first task to support the pilot was to work with the school and council on monitoring air quality. The council provided a hand held monitor and a group of parents got together to monitor outside the school entrance mornings and afternoons over two week-long periods. While it was fun to get the kids interested and gave an opportunity to talk to other parents about air quality, this was ultimately pointless. Hardly any of the data was properly recorded and no account was taken of climactic conditions as there was no reference point. After these experiences we can see how important the expertise of our Breathe London team are.
The second was to get a visit from the Council member for the environment to understand better the safety and health issues faced by kids at the school. As well as supporting the school streets initiative, the parent group was also campaigning for a crossing and overall safer main road near the school, which would support more active travel to and from school. The visit, and a campaign around the council’s consultation, ultimately led to the crossing being built (not early enough to avoid a potentially serious accident involving a child, which may also have focused minds of decision makers).
Behaviour change
The third was to engage other parents. With many changes, there is the phenomenon of a vocal minority who don’t like the change and this was no exception. Some parents liked to be able to drop their children by car at the school gates and this pilot was not welcome. The school and council had to staff the barriers during the pilot programme and sadly there were some instances of arguments with those who thought they should still be allowed to drive through. This became such a serious issue that it contributed to the scheme being paused for a term after the initial pilot.
Which leads to the fourth: engage the children, and through them perhaps change the minds of the parents. The school council got involved in monitoring and two parents (Louise included, much to the embarrassment of her daughter) ran a school assembly with fun facts drawn from Mums for Lungs and Friends of the Earth material. Sustrans also supported a couple of great events which included a static bike that the kids could cycle and make a smoothie in the process!
The fifth and final task was money. This became a critical issue both for the school street and the push to get a lollipop person to improve the crossing on the main road. The school ultimately could not afford to staff the barriers for the school street while the council worked on getting cameras installed. This led to a pause after the initial pilot which was a shame for instilling the behaviour change. And the lollipop person was a definite no. Creative ideas were pursued such as time-banking volunteers but it all proved too complex.
But finally, the school street launched permanently! It got some nice coverage via Bloomberg which helped raise the importance of school streets. And recently, we understand the Council has voted to extend the hours. Just think of the additional air quality all those children have enjoyed as a result.
Want one too?
Across London, many schools now have a school street. But if yours is not one of them, there are lots of resources to help you get yours set up. We wish we had these resources at the time! It was a good learning experience but, after all, that’s what schools are for.