Children love active travel to school
Since 2015, the Active Travel to School and Healthy City programme, supported by the Slovene Ministry of Health, has been promoting active travel to school. The programme revealed that many children would prefer to travel actively to school if adults facilitated it. Additionally, we discovered that driving culture and traffic systems have a greater impact on children’s road safety than the transport infrastructure. In autumn 2023, we launched a web platform called ‘How do we walk to school?’ to collect data on children’s travel to school. Our aim was to give weight to the initial findings and encourage local communities to take action. 38 schools from 17 different municipalities and 9,758 pupils participated in the survey. Analysis showed that only 35% of children traveled to school actively on the chosen day, while 71% of them would choose an active mode of travel (walking, cycling, scooting, skateboarding, rollerblading) if given a chance. This gap deserves serious attention and needs to be addressed. Detailed survey analysis indicates that children’s interest in active travel to school decreases with age, with older pupils showing less enthusiasm for walking and cycling to school than younger ones. The Walking Bus and Bicycle Train are two of the initial activities that local authorities and schools can undertake to encourage younger pupils and parents to actively travel to school, while also creating a child-friendly local transport environment. The programme offers training and supports schools and municipalities in organizing such activities.
The schools’ data is presented on the “How do we travel to school?” web platform, with separate results for each school. The results are divided into three age groups for schools with more than 100 pupils: 1st grade, 2nd to 5th grade, and 6th to 9th grade.
The above charts show the overall results of the survey conducted in 38 schools in the autumn of 2023.
The results indicate that only 35% (n= 9710) of surveyed children traveled to school actively. This proportion is relatively low, especially comparing it to 71% (n= 9597) of children who would like to travel to school actively. Active modes of travel included walking, scootering, rollerblading, roller skating and cycling to school.
The largest gap between children’s mode of travel and their preferred mode of travel to school is with first graders. In the first grade, 72% of children are driven to school by car, while only 17% of surveyed pupils would prefer to travel to school in this manner.
The percentage of pupils who are driven to school decreases with age. In the first grade, 72% of children are driven to school, while in the 9th grade this figure drops to 30%, which is also the lowest percentage of children traveling to school by car among all grades.
Among the active modes of travel to school, walking is the most common mode of travel (29%), followed by scooters, skateboards, or rollerblades (3%), and cycling (3%). The survey also revealed an increase in the proportion of pupils arriving by scooters, skateboards, or rollerblades after 4th grade (by 3 percentage points) and by bicycle after 5th grade (by 4 percentage points), once they get the cycling license.
Out of preferred modes of travel to school, cycling stands out as the most popular (26%), followed by walking (27%), with travel by car (17%) or bus (12%) being less popular options.
Introduction
Walking or cycling to school can benefit children’s health and well-being. During the journey, children exercise, wake up, socialize and prepare for school day ahead. Active travel to school can improve their mood, help them connect with their peers, become more independent, integrate into the local environment, and better understand traffic around them. Additionally, active travel to school can help children develop healthy habits and positive experiences for an active lifestyle. In 2015, the Active Travel to School and Healthy City programme began with the simple idea: walking to school can benefit every child. Slovenia’s dense network of schools makes walking to school an ideal way to encourage children to be physically active every day. When speaking with school children and their parents it became apparent that parents frequently opt to drive their children to school due to safety concerns. However, parents may not always consider how their children feel during the car ride, the effects of driving on their children’s socialisation, travel habits, and lifestyle, or how their own driving impacts traffic, air quality, and the safety of other children on school routes during morning commutes. As we worked with schools and communities examining school routes and finding solutions for a healthier, more walkable environment, we discovered that in many cases improving safety and walking conditions required organization and raising awareness rather than new infrastructure. To improve walking conditions, it is more important for drivers of motorised and non-motorised vehicles (bicycles, skateboards, scooters) to pay greater attention to pedestrians and reduce their speed, rather than planning new pavements and separate pedestrian routes which are often not feasible due to space constraints.How do children travel to school?
These observations have prompted us to focus more on these issues. In the autumn of 2023, during European Mobility Week, we launched an online platform to record how children travel to school. We invited all Slovenian schools and municipalities to assess how their pupils travel to school and their preferred mode of travel. The data collection took place between mid September 2023 and early December 2023. On a particular day, 38 schools surveyed their pupils to determine their current mode of travel to school and their preferred mode of travel if given the choice. The survey included 9,758 pupils from 26 schools, including 12 branches, located in 17 different municipalities across Slovenia.
The schools’ data is presented on the “How do we travel to school?” web platform, with separate results for each school. The results are divided into three age groups for schools with more than 100 pupils: 1st grade, 2nd to 5th grade, and 6th to 9th grade.
The above charts show the overall results of the survey conducted in 38 schools in the autumn of 2023.
The results indicate that only 35% (n= 9710) of surveyed children traveled to school actively. This proportion is relatively low, especially comparing it to 71% (n= 9597) of children who would like to travel to school actively. Active modes of travel included walking, scootering, rollerblading, roller skating and cycling to school.
The largest gap between children’s mode of travel and their preferred mode of travel to school is with first graders. In the first grade, 72% of children are driven to school by car, while only 17% of surveyed pupils would prefer to travel to school in this manner.
The percentage of pupils who are driven to school decreases with age. In the first grade, 72% of children are driven to school, while in the 9th grade this figure drops to 30%, which is also the lowest percentage of children traveling to school by car among all grades.
Among the active modes of travel to school, walking is the most common mode of travel (29%), followed by scooters, skateboards, or rollerblades (3%), and cycling (3%). The survey also revealed an increase in the proportion of pupils arriving by scooters, skateboards, or rollerblades after 4th grade (by 3 percentage points) and by bicycle after 5th grade (by 4 percentage points), once they get the cycling license.
Out of preferred modes of travel to school, cycling stands out as the most popular (26%), followed by walking (27%), with travel by car (17%) or bus (12%) being less popular options.
