Losing battle against the school run

Published on Saturday 9 May 2009 19:56

MORE than one in five Scottish school pupils still travel to their classrooms by car, a new survey of commuting habits reveals.

The survey also shows wide discrepancies between the numbers of children transported by their parents in local council areas, with five times as many travelling by car in some than in others.

The study by sustainable transport charity Sustrans of the school run in 2008 questioned 400,000 pupils about how they arrive and leave school. The growing numbers of pupils not walking, using pedal power or public transport have led to calls for more government cash to be spent on persuading parents not to drive their children to their lessons. Walking rates have declined from around 56 per cent in 2002 to 48 per cent last year.

Rising levels of car ownership have been blamed for the trend, along with fears about road safety caused by more vehicles on the roads. Car commuting by children is also believed to be partially to blame for rising obesity levels. Around one fifth of primary school pupils are classed as being overweight and 8 per cent "obese", according to government statistics.

Those pupils most likely to be ferried to school attend the country's independent schools, where just 27 per cent opted to use their own two feet. Almost half were driven in by their fee-paying parents.

The survey showed that pupils in East Renfrewshire were among the most likely to arrive by car – with more than one third being driven to their lessons. This contrasts with the best area, Falkirk, where just 7 per cent travel by car.

Other areas which performed poorly in the survey include Inverclyde (34 per cent), Dumfries and Galloway (26 per cent), North Lanarkshire (24 per cent), South Lanarkshire (24 per cent) and Perth and Kinross (24 per cent). Of the major cities, Glasgow's school run statistics were worst, with 26 per cent of children driven to school compared with Dundee (25 per cent), Edinburgh (21 per cent) and Aberdeen (16.5 per cent).

East Renfrewshire scored worse than some of the most sparsely populated areas, with students in rural Angus, Moray and the Highlands more likely to set out on foot.

A spokesman for the council offered up the area's high level of car ownership as a possible explanation for the commuting preferences of its schoolchildren.

"One of the biggest problems we have is that many working parents drop their children off at school on the way to work, and it's very hard to persuade them to do otherwise," he said.

"Many of our schools serve very large catchment areas which include suburbs and rural areas without direct public transport links to our schools, but we continue to promote other means of getting to school safely and on time."

Aberdeen, meanwhile, boasted the most active pupils, with 65 per cent choosing to walk or cycle. Only 16.5 per cent are driven in. City Council leader Kate Dean said it had seen the proportion of pupils walking to school more than double in recent years, with a similar rise in those choosing to cycle.

Linking the dramatic improvement to campaigning by council officers and a local cycle forum, she said: "We have promoted the health and safety benefits of walking to school for several years now and it's really paid dividends.

"We have achieved great success but we're not complacent – in fact we're now aiming to cut the percentage of pupils driven to school by at least 10 per cent by 2012."

Despite fears over child safety, the report found primary school pupils to be considerably more likely to walk, cycle or skate than older children and teenagers.

Sustrans was given 3.8 million of public money in 2007-8 to spend on building cycle paths and bike storage facilities, which it claims have doubled the use of cycling and walking routes near its 103 project schools.

Colin Howden, director of Transform Scotland, another group campaigning for transport reform, hailed the results as "unequivocal proof" that children would choose healthier ways to get to school if it was safer and more convenient.

Hitting out at the lack of new cash being channelled into tackling the issue, he said: "I don't see any more money in the pipeline from the Scottish Government for this type of work.

"They should consider continuing and scaling up funding for this type of work, to enable Sustrans, and other similar organisations, to work with every school in Scotland and get even more Scottish children travelling to and from school sustainably, actively and healthily."

A government spokeswoman said that a public consultation on improving cycling rates was due to be launched "shortly".