This week Keith Bingham of CW talks to two schools.. one which can do cycling and one which cannot offer it.
Teacher and Cyclist Paul D does know all about the benefits derived from cycling.. but says it's
impractical to offer in many schools as part of the PE curriculum. He teaches in a primary school in Milton Keynes - which has 220 kids aged 7-11.
His school serves an area of some
Quote:
considerable deprivation
Sport is a key area in his school with strong links to MK Dons and MK Lions.
Paul D says his school does have coaches coming into his school to deliver rugby/gymnastics and dance lessons.. and also meplys a coach to help train support staff to deliver PE lessons. He also says his school offeres after-school running/cricket/football and athletics and busses the older children to the local secondary to use their gym and also busses children to the local authority swimming pool.
But cycling
Paul D in CW wrote:
Who will teach cycling? Where will these bikes come fromand where will I take them to cycle
CW wrote:
He said he would not take the children cycling on the Milton Keynes Redway cycling system .. implying it was unsafe
Sigh.. the other thing CW etc have to remember is that he has to ensure a LOT of very young kids would be safe in this situation. A group of say 15-20 small kids do take a lot of supervision when in a "school crocodile walk" after all. I thus do not think he is meaning that cycling on this network is unsafe.. rather that the logistics of supervising 15 -20 children does present problems to the teachers who can find themselves being done for manslaughter if things go wrong on these activities
To be fair to him ...
Ian Drake .. deputy CEO of British Cycling wrote:
Paul makes extremely valid points about the practicalities of doing this as we stand right now, and hte reality is that is ould need a significant change in both the infrastructure in schools, local cimmunities and the routes to schools
North Face of the Eiger...
But Ian D comments that
Quote:
Swimming is on the National Curriculum .,. but not all schools have a pool on site - so why can't the same thing happen for cycling?
Well..
1. Swimming is a definite life skill as this can save a life if you fall into water. It's also a much more comprehensive work out for the body and low-impact stress in the water too
2. All areas have a pool provided by the local councils which do have sessions reserved for the state primaries.
It may not be possible given the location and
residential estate nature of these schools ... because let's face facts here.: Schools are not somewhere out in the country - nor always on main roads. Most of them
serve the commununity and are situated within fair reach of a number of residential housing estate clusters. It may not then be that easy to build a "traffic free route linking all the feeder primaries and their secondary school. To do would mean bulldozing a lot of estates and existing schools and re-building with such specific civil engineering.
I live in the here and now and not in some pipe dream land which has not a hope in hell of becoming reality and we thus have to look at how to EDUCATE with a firm grasp of risk assessment and a safety led approach .. without undermining common sense and a bit of "derring do"
However, Jessika (one of the riff raff
once removed thankfully
form me as a relative
) became Head teacher in an inner city former "sink school".. her task was to "re-float it".. and she has moved it from foundering on the rocks to a fairly respectable results history. But she introduced cycling into the curriculum immediately - but had to juggle it with a "rolling fluctuate programme" with tennis, cricket, PE sessions and swimming.
But she arranged for half the group to do cycling and the other half normal PE and then swap over. She did likewise with the other sports. She has been doing this since 2002. (As well as offering "COAST"/Green Cross as part of
PSE/CITIZENSHIP
She's the head .. so she got the odd shool fund raiser "fayre" and some top up from the LA to purchase her basic bikes on a bulk deal from Halfords
She has since had a grant from BC to buy a few more
ain recognition of her "GOOD WORK!"
Not a bad result for a "Swiss idiot"
who likes a good track day
nd loathes speed cam nonsenses.
But CW does not have the story of a school serving an area of
Quote:
considerable social deprivation
in Merseyside
But Icknield High School (wherever Icknield is
) The Head of PE there is a keen cyclist. She has the support of the Headteacher, Sustrans, Icknield RC cycling club and British Cycling. The Sustrans Bike It officer helped the school secure additional cycling parking, and there are cycling club runs
Quote:
in the summer
{quote=Icknield RC member Richard N in CW"]
The cycling club spent one whole day at the school and handled 4 different PE lessons. The kids were offered a choice of netball, or baskketball indoors or cycling.
About half chose cycling even though it was winter.
BC provided 20 bikes and helmets for this session and it worked really well. The LA is also providing Bikeability and Dr Bike Maintenance classes.
It's a win-win situation as the school have a lesson taken off their hands and we have a chance to get kids cycling [/quote]
Richard N points out there are grants available for buying bikes and a storage container for them
OK .. a team effort - but how many clubs out there put their time and money where their mouths are.
Also - how often is this and what is the superviser to kids ratio if on the roads. Are they split into small groups as easier to teach?
Commendable.
of course. More than most are achieving
. but more to it than meets the eye. Jess keeps her charges within the school boundary and the Bikeability coach she hires has no more than five with him at any one time if he's teaching around the residential roads and the one main road around this school. (School fron is on a 40 mph road... but Jess closed off the main road entrance which means the kids enter and leave the school at a "quieter point"