Rewards for walking to primary school

[Manyofhorror3]

We've had a note saying that children will be rewarded with house points if they walk to school once a week and back, for 3 weeks. DC1 is already on about it, and there is no way we will be doing it. We live in the next village, four miles away, as do lots of children, as it's a faith school with a huge catchment area.
I asked why the school was essentially rewarding kids for things they have no control over, and they sad it was an attempt to reduce congestion at pick up time. But if they'd actually asked the parents who drive to school they'd find they're doing it out if necessity, not choice!
AIBU to think this is a crap way to sort out an unavoidable issue?

That sounds an excellent idea. I will suggest it to the local juniors. Too many parents feel that 500m is too far for little darlings to walk.

At my school the children who also park further away to school and then walk further than normal are also rewarded - park and stride it is called.
Allows those who live further away to join in.

I think our school does park and stride, not that you would know it.

Our school doesn't do anything for walk to school week. I'm glad they don't as DS2 is disabled and school (closest one) is 1.5 miles away. DH takes DS1 and DS2 to breakfast club in the car on his way to work and I pick them up on the bus.

DD2's school have a 'walk to school' scheme. If the children walk to school they get a badge. I think the badge is awarded once per month. They only have to walk once in that month, I think...

Anyhow, we live too far out to walk to school, so we park at the bottom of the hill and the children walk up the hill to school. This counts.

Surely if you live 4 miles away from the school, there should be bus provision? Here if you are over 2 miles (KS1) or over 3 (KS 2) you get a bus or taxi place.

Ah, OK, I had assumed that as there were lots of dc travelling from the same place, it would be the catchment school. Sorry to be dense, most people here just go to their nearest school. (Doesn't stop the car madness at pick-up time, mind you.)

That would piss me off. I do the school run to breakfast club en route to work which is 5 miles away and not accessible by anything other than car.

I'd hate for my child to feel the odd one out for something out of their control

Yes Travelincolour is right, no transport provision and even if there were, it's unlikely that those with nursery/infant school age children would use it.

Spanishfly we are ALREADY using the carpark, and still getting hassle to walk the entire journey! The use of the carpark isn't the issue - it's jam packed all the time and not really big enough so unless you're there early you have to then park on the road, hence the congestion. It is a problem, but rewarding the kids who are able to walk from home, not just from the carpark, seems very silly.

My dc are at 2 different schools (Y3 and YR) and it wouldn't be physically possible to walk from one to the other in the time available between ds1 needing to be dropped off and ds2 needing to be dropped off even if i was able to persuade them to be ready early rather than late in the mornings

Walking it would be a round trip of nearly 2 hours - about 40 minutes to get to ds1's school, another 40 minutes on to ds2's school and then about half an hour home. That's assuming that ds2 who is 5 and not very sporty or good at going for long enforced walks was able to walk at a good pace for the entire distance - unlikely, especially for the first year or two.

Driving is significantly faster, not least because there are some direct dual carriage ways that I can use that I couldn't use to walk along - so even from a mileage point of view, the walk is likely to be further than the drive.

When it was snowy, the school let the parents into school 10 minutes before they usually do (ie the 10 minutes they would normally be running around in the playground in the morning if they got there early) and in the afternoon, they let people in 10 minutes before the official end of day leaving time, to make it safer and easier as they couldn't have everybody standing on the playground and they didn't want them standing around outside their front door where there is significantly less space and it would have been dangerous.

End result - huge improvement in congestion - or lack thereof, you could park in the car park or nearby easily throughout, unlike normally where you end up parking a good walk away, so much less stress and hassle. Really wish they could think up a practical scheme to have a fuzzy start and end to the day, as it could make life so much better for so many more of the people taking their kids to school!

And when I suggested it to them, they just dismissed it as 'never being able to work' - despite the fact that it had effectively been trialled already on many of the snowy days we had over the winter and shown to be successful - everybody really liked it and was commenting on how good it was as it made life so much less stressful. arrrrgghhhhhh.

We did this at my old school. Children who lived driving distance, who couldn't walk were rewarded if parent/carer parked in a non congested area a walking distance from the school and walked from there.

Everyone won :) Talk to the school and clarify but I'm sure this would be an acceptable option.

I think if it were individual points/certificates/prizes etc then it would be unfair to penalise a child because of their parents choice (or lack of choice) of transport.

I couldn't walk to school as I live too far away but I do not do as many others do and park, illegally sometimes to get the closest parking space to school. I park further away and walk in from there. Some of them come to school half an hour before drop off and pick up just so they don't have to walk as far .

One of my friends live within 10 minutes walking distance but she doesn't have enough time to drop off her dc, walk back home and get to work on time so she comes in the car. She parks where I do though so doesn't cause congestion close to the school.

There are others who have disabilities etc who also can't walk.

However, it is a house points system so as long as some in the class are doing the walking thing then they will get some points for the house. There may be other things that happens in school that the car driving dc do to win points another time.

This is unnecessary; my neighbour lives a 15min walk away from the school. Straight up the road. She drives there at 8am to get a parking spot and again at 2pm to get a parking spot. Another mum at the school lives 20 min walk away from the school. Her neighbour walks to school with 4 dcs in tow. But not that lady..noo....she drives the long drive to school. That's pointless. If you can walk some of the way or all of the way then bloomin do so!

Zip zap - the 'fuzzy start and end' may have been a success from the parents' point of view, but you don't know how it affected the teachers' preparation for the day and their after-school activities. At the school I work at, we let the children in early in really bad weather and it's a pain - they have to be supervised, so teachers can't carry on preparing equipment, briefing the TA etc and you can't start the lesson as they are not all there. If you had a fuzzy end, you wouldn't be able to meet with parents or start afterschool clubs while other children were still around.

I think it's OK to give house points as long as there are multiple ways to earn them.

So some points for walking to school, some for helping clan up, some for good work, some for behaviour etc etc.

a carpark almost a quarter of a mile away

YABU. That's no distance at all.

If you are a working parent who has to drop off on the way to your commute, as I am, you just have to get over the inherent unfairness of being rewarded for walking when it is not a possibility in your timetable. Sometimes in walk to school week, I park further away and let them walk, but it adds an extra 30 min onto the drop-off and I am then late for work and have to make the time up at the other end of the day, hardly a great result. But although I used to get indignant about this, I do think encouraging children to think about when walking IS possible, and walking as much as possible is not a bad thing, as long as the non-walkers are not penalized (so giving house points is not penalizing them). Once they are old enough, you can get a discussion going about how fair or not fair it is!

Ours is a village school too. When mine were young, the school would have a word with the parish council and the village hall carpark was made available for a period. It was a ten minute walk from school and it meant everybody got their stickers.

YANBU
To join the walking bus I still have to use almost the same amount of petrol (2.7 rather than 2.9 miles), I just have to get up earlier.

I wish some of the parents at our school would stop driving. Ours is a village school and there are about 200 children.

About 10% of those live outside of the actual village (us included- we are 3 miles from the village and this is the only school within 10 miles).

Of those who drive though probably around 70% are stay-at-home-parents using the second car. Most of them live less than 5 minutes walk from the school.

The car park at the school (and there is no other car park and no church or anywhere else but the road) is for teachers, LA vehicles and parents/carers of disabled children (there are 6 disabled children, my ds is one) or disabled parents/carers.

The amount of times I have seen able bodied parents who live practically across the road from the school parked in disabled spots is unreal

We walk to school pretty much every day- we don't own a car and only in extreme weather do we get a lift from one of the farms next to our house. We walk down a main road to get to the school and every day there are several parents parked dangerously at the side of the road.

There is an underpass that goes from the school to the houses on the other side of the road (the school is at the side of the main road in the village) and some idiots parents park on top of the underpass, blocking the view for other drivers/pedestrians of where the children are.

I have no issue with people who NEED to drive for work reasons or health reasons but there are far too many parents at our school who are really just being lazy and making the walk to school dangerous for other people.

If giving out house points to children who walked would encourage them to stop driving to school here I would absolutely support it.

Some schools operate a 'stop and drop' system, where parents can pull up outside the school, let their children out, and there is a parent rota where parents make sure the children get into school safely. Then the TAs meet them inside to provide whatever help they need.

It works well, bit it does require a lot of parental support.

Stop and Drop would be fantastic!