Top tips for the back to school run
Choose How You Move are here to help with the back to school run in September and beyond, with ideas to make your daily journeys safe and fun. We’re encouraging parents to get involved and choose alternative ways to travel to school – but we’re also helping parents who need to drive to school too, to build alternative transport into their school run.
Why active travel?
Exercise is especially important for young people, which is why we at Choose How You Move encourage travelling in more active ways. Walking, cycling and wheeling:
- Helps both physical and mental health
- Builds confidence, independence, and responsibility
- Builds social skills, if travelling with others
- Reduces reliance on cars
- Avoids school gate stress
- Teaches road awareness and safety
These healthy habits go a long way to make children happy and healthy in later life too.
Walking back to school
Did you know that under half of all children in the UK walk to school? We’re on a mission to get that number higher, with your help.
Read our tips and conversation starters to help you along the journey.
Interactive maps
Knowing your walking route can give you confidence in your time, and make sure you’re safe – especially important when going back to school!
For kids walking on their own, it also provides a layer of reassurance for parents to know which routes they can take.
You can use our Walking Maps to plan your journey in advance – you can select which form of sustainable travel you plan to use.
Youth Mental Health Day
Walking can reduce stress and anxiety and boost mental wellbeing overall. It can also be an effective way to distract kids from the ultimate distraction—screens.
Walking for a journey can provide relief from attention-hungry phones and puts kids in a better frame of mind for the day (especially important when heading back to school after a long summer holiday!).
Youth Mental Health Day lands on 19 September, with Stem4 (Supporting Teenage Mental Health) announcing this year’s theme of #ControlYourScroll. It’s a chance to talk about phones and offer time away from them so you can all be in the moment together.
Why not use Youth Mental Health Day to start a conversation about better mental health with your children?
5 Ways to Wellbeing
There are 5 steps to look after our wellbeing:
- Connect
- Be active
- Take notice
- Keep learning
- Give
Walking to and from school, especially with others, can give kids the chance to practice these 5 ways to wellbeing.
How many of these can you incorporate into walking with your children?
Cycling back to school
Cycling offers a way to travel to school that is faster than walking and scooting, and offers the same mental and physical benefits. It also teaches your children even more about road safety and independence. Incorporating cycling into your routine can also encourage cycling as a pastime outside of school hours.
We’ve got our top tips on hand to make cycling a safe and spectacular mode of transport for going back to school.
Pledge to pedal for Cycle to School Week
Get involved and have some fun! This year, Cycle to School Week will land on Monday 23 September – Friday 27 September, when schoolkids across the nation will be using pedal power to get going!
Bikeability – the course for training schoolchildren how to ride safely – have provided a bumper pack of resources so you family or school can get stuck in.
But don’t keep it quiet – we want to see your pledges too! During #CycleToSchoolWeek, tag Choose How You Move on socials and we’ll reshare your brilliant achievements!
Cycling maps
Eager to get into cycling, but not sure where to start?
At Choose How You Move, we’re big fans of biking – and love to celebrate our county. We’ve combined the two for our local Cycling Maps, which show cycling routes where you live.
Cycling maps can help improve your children’s knowledge of your area and improve awareness of public rights of way. Use them for family cycling trips, or school routes, or both – the county is your oyster!
ABCs of bike maintenance
Safety is a vital part of getting kids active for the journey to school – and education is the key to good cycling.
We’ve covered the ABCs of basic cycle maintenance to make bike safety quick and easy to learn – and always accessible for you and your family. Watch below to get learning!
Scooting back to school
A little more whizz than walking, bringing a scooter to the school run makes the journey even more fun! It brings all the same benefits of being active and sociable when going back to school too.
Swap a car, save a scooter
September has much to offer for more active forms of transport. Zero Emissions Day and Car Free Day fall this year on 21 and 22 September, on the weekend. If you’re car conscious, or unsure how to start taking more active journeys, you could switch to scooters on the school run around this time to give yourself a goal. Speedier than simply walking, those little wheels will get you whizzing to the school gates in no time.
Scooter safety
Bringing wheels into the equation doesn’t need to be a worry. As with other forms of active travel, scooting allows schoolkids to learn from an early age about road safety and how to navigate pavements with other people.
Personal safety is a big part of keeping kids safe out in the world. CBeebies have compiled their 7 top safety tips for scooting so children can wheel alongside you, happy and safe.
Journey Planner
Our Journey Planner is an interactive, online map with active and public transport at its heart, so you can plot your journey in a way that works for you. This way, you can take extra measures to plan your travel with the scooters, making sure it’s a safe and timely journey that gets you settled in the back to school run.
Driving back to school?
We want to encourage as many people as possible to choose travel options that are more active and better for them. But it’s also true that parents don’t always have a choice whether to take the car or not – either living too far away, and/or with time constraints.
There are still ways to make driving to and from school a healthier, more active journey – and to make the school gates a cleaner, calmer place for everyone to be.
Car sharing
Does your schoolchild have friends who live nearby? Share the journey and keep the school run sociable – go together! Car sharing between more than one household can suit your busy schedule, and it means one less car to compete with when finding a place to park.
Park part of the way
If you’re dropping off older schoolchildren who you can trust to get to and from school safely, you could consider doing a halfway journey. A shorter journey for you, and that all-important independence for them, you can tackle the toughest part of the journey and still have space for them to make their own way.
Park and Stride
For younger children going back to school, Park and Strides are a great way for parents and kids to get to school in a healthy, active way, even if you still need to drive to school. Parents can drive to a local public area, like pubs, leisure centres or parks, to then walk with their children for the rest of the journey to school. It’s an opportunity for families to enjoy walking or scootering together, and to have a sociable start to the day!
We’re always looking to help with more Park and Strides – if you’d like to see a Park and Stride happen at your school, please get in touch at choosehowyoumove@leics.org.uk.
