Cherry Orchard Primary School - Active Travel Plan

Cherry Orchard Primary School participates in the ModeShift STARS Programme and we are currently working towards our Green then Bronze Star accreditation.

ModeShift STARS inspires children to travel to school sustainably, actively, responsibly and safely by championing walking, scooting and cycling. Mode Shift STARS supports pupils’ wellbeing, helps to reduce congestion at the school gates and improve road safety and air quality.

We actively encourage our Cherry Orchard families to walk or cycle to school as part of a healthy active lifestyle.

What is active travel?

Active travel means walking or cycling as a means of transport in order to get to a particular destination such as work, the shops or to visit friends. It does not cover walking and cycling done purely for pleasure, for health reasons, or simply walking the dog. Active travel can be for complete journeys or parts of a journey.

What are the benefits?

Active travel can:

• improve health and keep us fit
• save money and fuel
• reduce traffic congestion around our school
• increase levels of physical activity
• improve air quality

What can you do?

Consider how you currently travel: have you thought about parking or getting off the bus ten minutes away from where you’re going and walking the last bit?

Encourage your child to use healthy ways to travel and record their trips to school on our travel tracker.

Follow Birmingham Connected @bhamconnected to see how you could incorporate Active Travel into your journey's around Birmingham and the West Midlands.

We are committed to promoting active and safe travel.

How do we do this?

We encourage all members of our school community to walk, cycle or travel by public transport for the journey to school. To support this we participate or promote the following:

• Cycle training (British Cycling)
• Cycle parking
• Public transport information for local bus and train services.
• Promote safe and active travel as much as possible on displays, newsletters, website and Twitter feed
• Use Modeshift Stars to update and monitor our school travel plan
• Living Streets Travel tracker to positively reward children that have walked, cycled, scooted or used public transport to get to and from school.
• Local school trips are made on foot if the destination is close by.
• We let all new pupils and their parents/carers know that we promote healthy and sustainable travel to school before the child starts at our school
• The school is supported in improving parking by Birmingham City Council with regular visits from Community Police Officers

We understand that sometimes there is no alternative to driving to school.

• Where a car must be used we ask parents to drive only part of the way, and drop their child(ren) off away from the school so that some of the journey can be walked or scooted
• We have a park and stride zone that we ask parents to park outside of to help ensure everyone can get to and leave school safely.
• We ask parents not to park on Cherry Orchard Road, Bramley Drive, Inverclyde or Coopers Road and instead park outside the blue circle on the attachment below and walk the remaining distance to school.
• If at all possible look to car share or use public transport as an alternative way of getting to school.
• If you do have to drive your child(ren) and stop in the near vicinity please do so legally, safely and with respect for our neighbours and local residents
• It is not acceptable to park or wait on double yellow lines, on the school zigzags or across residential driveways for any period of time.

Please note that the decision on whether a child is competent to cycle or scoot to school is for the parent(s) or carer(s) to make. The school has no liability for any consequences arising from this decision.

We are always looking for new ideas and how we can further reduce pollution and traffic around our school site and would welcome opinions on how we could tackle travel and transport issues. Therefore if you have any ideas on how we could further promote active travel, please feel free to email enquiry@cherryorchard.bham.sch.uk