Bermondsey’s St James’ Primary School won a Silver STARS award from Transport for London last week, for their efforts in ensuring safe travel for pupils.
The school joined 57 others across south London for the awards, which stands for Sustainable Travel: Active, Responsible and Safe.
STARS is TfL’s flagship accreditation scheme that supports primary and secondary schools with school travel plan activities.
It helps and encourages the whole school community to adopt safe and sustainable ways of travelling to school, such as cycling, walking and public transport.
Pupils shared ideas on how to increase active and safer travel and how to overcome issues they face on travelling to school.
Activities ranged from discussions about barriers to active travel to school, to best ways of communicating messages to the school communities and smart ideas of how best to reduce car use.
Suggestions included: a bike raffle for children who consistently ride their bike to school, creating posters to encourage children to walk to school and encouraging more people to carpool, so the number of vehicles on roads can be reduced.
Since 2007, accreditation to STARS has grown from 180 schools to 1,556 schools from all London boroughs.