'Walk to school Week'- why, why, why?

[ampere]

What IS the point of this money wasting exercise?

Surely mums (as mums it practically always is!) who drive their DCs to school, by and large either do it because:

-they work and unless they have a very understanding employer who will accommodate them being late for a week, may lose their job over this; or

-mums whom wild horses wouldn't induce to walk, let alone a poxy sticker scheme!

Once again it's attempting societal engineering via schooling rather than attack the 'core' of the problem- if, indeed it IS a problem- being the fact none of us have any time any more and many of us have mortgages or rent to pay! Furthermore, really, why expect DCs to trog to school in all weathers when we, as adults, take the car everywhere?

I wish schools would spend the money on sticking to the point and schooling our DCs not rewarding behaviour 'walkers' already do and guilt tripping those who can't!

Yes I really fancy my 6 year old's chances crossing the A36 (god you are dense)

Is off before she verbally mauls thicky StarlightTrollGirl any further

Well the A36 wouldn't be very busy at that time of the morning if it wasn't full of crazy parents driving their kids to school!

Lol - moron.

Seriously - are you really this obtuse or are you just trying to get a rise?

Name suits you btw - keep it!

ermmm doesn;t the A36 go to Southampton? I'm sure there's a lot of commuters heading work on that road........unless I'm thinking of the wrong road.

Yes - between southampton and salisbury tocatta, there is just the odd sheep and tonnes of school mums though according to TSTG (I am growing rather fond of her)

thought so - so I expect there's a fair load of 7.5tners heading down/up from the port as well

now - I trust my DS1 (9 1/2) to walk my DS2 (6 and a bit) across 2 roads to school..............but they're kind of on a different league, they're very narrow streets where because of a lack of parking it's generally one way (even not during school time because of how the residents have to park).......the A36.........kind of like telling them to cross the M1........

Yes Toccata, but according to Starlight, 6 year old ds could have fun playing chicken with those!

No commuters at 9am!

I'm contacting MN about your moron post btw!

Tocatta - frankly, even I don't like crossing that road!

Oh errr - quakes in shoes

now you know I think there are very few excuses for not walking at least part way to school (and I still don't know how parking a few streets away from than on the school road is going to make you desperately late for work ), but there are exceptions to the rule of having to walk all the way there..........and I'd say that having to cross a major trunk road is pretty good one

They will delete my post whilst secretly agreeing that you are indeed a moron of magnificent magnitude. Good night, sleep well

toccata - thank you, I heart you x

Yeah sure tocatta. I think the thing though is individual circumstances differ, but 'in general' there is a lot more walking can be done if people just opened their minds and stopped being so damned lazy!

Having said that, I don't think the way our society is set up helps much. Especially now with the recession. People are being worked very hard just to keep the lifestyle that they worked fairly hard to get and the economy and housing is very much based on dual-income households etc.

I think you'll find that leaving for school at 9am would make you LATE for school, so they have to travel earlier, and funnily enough commuters travel earlier as well. People that have gone into the office and the head off to a meeting elsewhere in the country (I'm taking a wild guess here that hmc is closer to the Southampton end of the road than the Bath end) there's not many roads out of Southampton.

And there's a VERY large cargo port in Southampton (at the bottom of the A36) - last time I checked lorries carrying the containers from the ports around the country didn't just stick to 9-3 hours..........

I have a SIL that lives down that way, we've travelled on the A36 (I thought I recognised the road) a fair few times at various times of day - and it's ALWAYS busy.

The M1 tends to be a bit quieter at certain times of the day.........would you cross that just to make yourself feeling good about walking somewhere instead of using the car?

hell I wouldn't even cross the A45 near me (with or without the kids in tow), and that's no where near such a major road

'I wish schools would spend the money on sticking to the point and schooling our DCs not rewarding behaviour 'walkers' already do and guilt tripping those who can't'

It's nothing to do with schools, it's another initiative thrust upon us by the government.
Be pissed off with the right people please, if you disapprove of the attempt to improve fitness levels and reduce pollution/school run accidents and the like.

We are very rural and I walk my kids to school, however we have to cross a dangerous A road and I don't see many cars slowing down despite the 30 miles an hour restrictions through the village or the school signs and the SLOW signs. Also the footpaths are pretty non existent and you have to negotiate with cars, esp with a pushchair.

It is frankly perilous and a very stressful morning school run, and we have contacted the council so many times but they won't do anything about it as they say they don't have the money to sort it out ie put a zebra crossing and/or speed bumps etc). I know a lot of mums who, especially in winter when it's dark, drive the kids back from school as it is very dangerous to walk them.

This is just one example where the government should go to the root of the problem imo.

I used to CYCLE to my primary along the A36 midway between Salisbury and Southampton when I was 8! I can barely cross it now it's so busy!

Bearing in mind my initial post was about the futility of the WTS week, the fact the school frontages are STILL full of the people- carriers and 4 wheel drive tanks, despite years of this annual event, mitigated only the once a year when the darlings are after a sticker would tend to support my assertion that it's a waste of time and money!

Someone early on said it was 'free', well, I think we can all be certain there's a committee being paid a slab of public cash to devise the scheme, risk assess the life out of it, design the literature and stickers, print it, distribute it, then evaluate the outcome!

I haven't time to read the entire thread, but i can see where OP is coming from.

I try and walk whenever possible, living a mile and a half from school it should be easy in theory but we are up a long hill and that with a buggy and a 3yo and the shopping is quite hard work, twice a day.

It is doable and I do it when I feel strong and have had enough sleep, and have not much else to do all day. But honestly, though I HATE driving and would far rather not even have a car (we don't own it but we have use of it)
if I do this trip in the morning, I often end up sat here the rest of the day because I am knackered. Ds wants to 'walk' home which involves climbing every single wall, stopping to fill the buggy with gravel and running ahead near the busy road so by the time we get back I am emotionally and physically drained.

I have to do everything here including all the DIY and regularly need to get large bags of animal feed, fence posts etc so really combining this with the school run is a time saving thing.

BUT we have recently realised we can park about a 15 minute walk away, on the flat, and walk from there which is nicer whn we have time.

Basically we walk when we can already.

Obviously lots of parents have good reasons for not walking their children to school, but I am not against a campaign that raises awareness of the possibility of walking and of the advantages.

I am very fortunate in that I live walkable distance from school (1.4 km) but also have a direct bus, that literally leaves from outside my front door and drops us outside school. In bad weather and in the morning, the bus is very useful! But I do try to walk the rest of the time (lunchtimes included) as I believe very strongly in the health and ecological benefits of walking. I'm not sure I would have been as aware of them when I was young.

If my DD had got into the school that we are in the catchment for which is 240m away then yes we would walk to school. As it is the school she attends is 1.5 miles away so I drive. As our catchment school is a faith school then as I am driving past it to DD's school other mums are driving their DC's in from other areas. Great.

I do actually park at my parents house which is a 5 min walk to DD's school. I see 2 mums who live literally a 2 minute walk from school, (down their close, across 1 minor road and then the end of another close is the school), regularly drive to the school.