Lean Green Eco Machine

Cycling in November? You're mad!

  This week has been 'Bike to School Week' on the Isle of Wight, a scheme run by the Highways department to promote safe cycling to school. The theme for the week is 'if I can cycle at this time of year, I can cycle at any time of year!'

It has proved very popular at Nodehill with 30 pupils coming on their bike each day and another 8 coming on their scooters. Obviously this is excellent news and provides the children with much of their required daily exercise.

  As these pictures show, our substantial bike racks have been full all week. The pupils get a sticker for each day that they have cycled and receive a participation prize at the end of the week. All their names will go into a draw for a prize of some high visibility cycle gear to reward their efforts.

Bike to School Week

Nodehill is proud to support Bike to School week on the Island running from the 5th- 9th  November 2007, with the theme being 'if you can cycle at this time of year, you can cycle at any time!'.

As part of the Transport section of the Eco School sproject and in accordance with our school travel plan, we actively encourage pupils to cycle or scooter to school and have improved our cycle storage facilities to promote this.

Next week, whenever pupils cycle or scooter into school they will collect a sticker from Mr Peace and at the end of the week they will receive a small participation gift if they have managed to do it every day. At the end of the week, all pupils who have cycled/ scootered during the week will be entered into a draw for a cycling related prize.

Ultimately, parents take responsibility for their child cycling into school and need to ensure that all bikes are in good working order and the child is a competent cyclist. Please make sure that your child wears a helmet and high visibility clothing at all times.

For any hints and tips on safe cycling, you can visit the Highway Code at www.highwaycode.gov.uk

School Travel Plan annual review

Part of the School Travel Plan programme is an annual review to identify the effect that our strategies are having on sustainable travel to and from school and identify new targets for the coming year. Year 7 maths pupils performed a survey of all pupils in the school to identify the modes of transport used and graphed the data ready for the review. The full file can be accessed by clicking on the link below but the headlines are as follows:

In comparison with last year, the data shows that 31 more pupils walk to school, double the number of pupils cycle (now 16), 28 more use public transport and car use has gone DOWN by 26 pupils. This is obviously excellent news and indicates that we are becoming more sustainable. Also, the survey was done in February at the back end of the wet winter and we think it would be even more positive in the summer months.

If you have any suggestions or comments regards this work or the work we are doing for the Eco-schools project please contact Mr Peace.

To download the full review, please click on this link:

Download nodehill_middle_school_annual_review_may_2007.doc

Transport 2006-2007

Having installed the new bike racks last year, we took the next step by covering them to provide a dry, safe storage facility for the bikes during the day as shown in these photos

   We have again participated in the Park and Stride scheme enabling parents to park in the Chapel Street Car park for 30 minutes at the start and end of the school day for free allowing pupils to walk down and meet them and getting some exercise into the bargain.

We have continued to provide cycle training for pupils in year 5 and 6. This year, 13 pupils took part in this training and 7 went on to obtain their cycling proficiency certificate.

At the end of this school year it will be time to review our School Travel Plan which we received certification for last year. In order to obtain the data for this review, Mrs Fauvel has been doing a transport survey of all the children in the school with her maths set and they will provide all sorts of graphs etc which we will publish on the site.

Go Ride!

We signed up to this scheme last year so that we could provide training for members of PE staff in order that we could offer cycling as part of PE lessons. Unfortunately the scheme turned into something of a political hot potato and Mr Reeves is still waiting to learn when the training is going to be.

Action plan Transport 06-07

• Evaluate travel plan every 6 months
• Research cycle rack rooves and purchase and install for the winter months
• Collect new data regarding modes of transport to school (link with maths curriculum) and feed into travel plan
• Identify any changes; evaluate success of current efforts to increase green travel and identify new measures that could be taken to sustain and develop this further.
• Go Ride scheme and implantation in PE

Transport September 2005 - July 2006

A lot of work this year has gone into producing the School Travel Plan. This will become a legal document in 2010 when every school will have one. We have managed to produce ours very early and this has earned us a grant which will go towards improving cycling facilities in the school. The full document can be by clicking on this link:

The school participated in the Park and stride scheme which allows parents to park in Chapel Street car park from 0800 - 0830 and 1500 - 1530 free of charge. The benefits of this are 2-fold - reducing traffic around the school at these key times and facilitating exercise for pupils walking to and from the car park each day. Parents have been able to collect the permits from the school office and put them

These before and after photographs show the old bike racks in September at the top and the the newbike racks installed in June below. You will also notice just how much fuller the racks seem - we must be having an effect with our cycling publicity!

We ran a cycling proficiency course for pupils from years 5 and 6 to provide them with the skills to safely ride their bikes to and from school every day.

We were part of a team which won the annual Europe-wide Shimano Gears competition which funds idea encouraging young people to cycle. The bid revolved around the development of an interactive cycling and educational experience based on an animated version of the Newport to Cowes cycleway. The software was trialled at Nodehill as part of Bike Wight week.

Other events in this week were free bike safety checks for pupils at Wight Mountain bike shop, assemblies on helmet safety and road awareness and cycle rides led by the IWYCC on the Newport to Cowes cycleway.

Transport summary 2004-2005

School Travel Plan

All pupils in the school completed a transport survey on the YoungTransnet website as part of their ICT lessons. The data collected was used to generate graphs showing how pupils in different year groups travelled to and from school and identified some of the issues preventing them from travelling to school in a more sustainable manner.We will now use this data in the Autumn term to complete our School Travel Plan and identify areas where we can promote and increase sustainable travel.

We organised cycling proficiency courses for the Autumn Term 2005.

We held a Green Travel Day raising £500 for the Meningitis trust. The idea behind the day was that staff had to come into school in a sustainable manner and if they did use a car, a hefty parking fee was imposed. Many staff bought into the idea: Headmaster, Mr Morris arrived on a scooter, Mr Dale a pogo stick, Mr Peace cycled from Sandown and Mrs Morris came on horseback.

The Isle of Wight County Press were there to photograph the shenanigans and gave the day an excellent write up!