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Review of Research on School Travel
CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION
Background
1.1 The Scottish School Travel Advisory Group (Scottish STAG) was established by the Scottish Executive in August 2000 with the objective of increasing the proportion of non-car based travel to school. The group seeks to identify practical means of increasing choices and influencing behaviour, and to develop a coherent approach to the management and administration of school travel. To ensure that their recommendations are based on state of the art knowledge, the group need, a concise summary of evidence on school travel drawn from UK and international research.
1.2 The aims of this project are to review UK and international research on travel to school published since 1995 including the research on factors affecting school travel and the effectiveness of school travel initiatives designed to address obstacles to efficient school travel.
Approach to the project
1.3 The review has been tackled in three stages:
- Scoping of national policies on school travel
- A broad map of available literature based on published bibliographies and two major recent literature reviews for UK STAG, supplemented by web and library based searches.
- A detailed review of selected literature drawing mainly from the sources identified above but supplemented by additional references identified within particular papers.
1.4 The broad mapping of the literature considered a total of over 550 references from recent travel to school literature reviews and bibliographies and from library and internet searches. The work was greatly assisted by a recent review for DTLR (EPPI 2001) which identified 335 papers as relevant to school travel from a detailed search of over 3000 potential papers. Although the DTLR project undertook a detailed review of only 39 of these papers, relevant to childrens' cognitive and social development, the broad search provides a fairly comprehensive bibliography on school travel issues. Other useful school travel bibliographies included those published by the School of the Built Environment at Nottingham University and the Victoria Transport Policy Institute in Canada.
1.5 The detailed review of selected literature built from the broad map of literature and considered the findings of over 50 papers as shown in chapter 6.
1.6 Although the focus has been on research published since 1995, in some cases the recent literature reviews have confirmed that earlier papers remain the authoritative texts on particular subjects. The literature review has therefore sourced and studied a number of older texts to allow as comprehensive coverage as possible of the relevant issues.
The policy context
1.7 Policies including social justice, economic efficiency and sustainability define the context for action on school travel. Within this framework, individual policies are developed by national and local government and other agencies, with school travel aims featuring strongly in transport, education and health policy.
1.8 National policies include:
- Transport - Particular attention is placed within road safety policy on reducing child casualties and addressing the specific problems faced by children in disadvantaged areas, so school travel is a priority area in safety policy. A key action is to "develop the safer routes to school policy". This policy recognises the critical relationship between education and transport and identifies the health, and reduction in congestion and pollution, benefits of encouraging children to walk or cycle to school or to use public transport through the development of individual school transport (travel) plans.
- Education - In addition to statutory education transport requirements, new community schools have been established across Scotland. These seek to develop more community ownership of the local education process including for travel to school managed through a safer routes to school process. There are however some tensions between community schooling and policies to allow parents choice in the selection of school. HM Inspectorate reports also highlight school travel problems at an individual school level.
- Health - In addition to general injury prevention, and treatment aims associated with road safety on the school journey, health policy includes initiatives to encourage healthier lifestyles. Healthy Living Centres under the New Opportunities Fund are including safer routes to school schemes; school travel aims are included in the physical activity task force plans and HEBS promotional activities to encourage more active commuting; and multi-disciplinary action is co-ordinated through health improvement programmes.
1.9 These national policies are being promoted recognising the strong community leadership role played by local authorities in Scotland. The development of community planning to help "modernise government" seeks to encourage joint approaches to problems between agencies (Cabinet Office 1997). The multi-disciplinary nature of action needed on school travel means that school travel planning demonstrates a wide range of the challenges and opportunities associated with the modernisation agenda.
1.10 For all transport and travel issues including school travel, local authorities in Scotland have more autonomy in the way they administer services than their English counterparts (SE 1998, DTLR 1998). This difference of approach has been seen since 1999 with the administration of school travel planning. In England, DTLR funds officers within authorities to administer school travel planning but in Scotland funding for school travel planning is less ring fenced for particular activities or initiatives.
1.11 However, with the Scottish Parliament, the politics of Scotland is changing and the relationship between the Scottish Executive and local authorities is evolving (CLGSP 1999). The values governing public administration have been identified as accountability, accessibility, openness, responsiveness, participation, and equal opportunity. The approach to managing and delivering any activity will in the future be guided by how best to ensure that these values are reinforced.
1.12 Delivering Best Value in school transport provision also introduces new pressures on authorities. There is currently a very wide range of provision of free school transport throughout the country and expenditure on school transport per head of population (Appendix A). Benchmarking of service provision will require authorities to question more closely how the service provision being offered relates to local needs.
1.13 It cannot be assumed that approaches which have been successful in England will be successful in Scotland. On average Scots are more egalitarian in outlook and are far more likely to accept community based action particularly on matters of social and economic inequity (Jowell et al 1989, 2000). Social classes in Scotland also tend to live in distinct neighbourhoods to a greater extent than in England and Wales. Individualist philosophy has more of a hold in the south of England than it does in Scotland, and Scots are more likely to look to government for action to resolve problems. These factors suggest that community based action is more likely to be successful in Scotland than in England, provided community leaders can be found.
1.14 Overall, successful school travel planning needs to work within this changing social, administrative and political framework recognising that new and existing mechanisms can be used to achieve improved safety and efficiency for diverse local communities throughout the country.
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