Proactive Approach to Schools

Today I was able to participate in the Your Move School Forum - looking at ways to get more of the schools in my local government area involved with Your Move. I am keen to help encourage local schools to join Your Move and submit stories so they can achieve Connecting Schools Grants and reap the rewards. While this Your Move Forum was primarily aimed at schools, the topic was "A Proactive Approach to School Traffic Management" and very appropriate to my role in the Traffic and Transport Team at the City of Cockburn.

I was able to get a work colleague from my team to also attend with me, from our office in the City of Cockburn as we attended the session online and saved hours of travel time and km. Two staff from the City of Albany were also online and the Community Development Officer from the City of Rockingham attended the Forum in Perth. Most of the Forum participants were parents or teachers and were in the meeting room in Perth and were able to networking and swap ideas over the delicious lunch provided.

Providing access to the session online was valuable as it meant two staff from the Traffic and Transport Team were able to become more involved and see the importance of the your Move program. We will continue to strongly encourage our 28 primary schools and 10 high schools to become part of Your Move.

I received an email from Cockburn's Children's Development Officer this week, requesting me to update information I provided for our School Update 2020. I usually provide information regarding TravelSmart and Your Move to help parents/teachers/principals reduce school parking and traffic congestion issues around the school. It is just one of many issues that City of Cockburn staff help schools with. I am keen to make the listing appeal to more schools so we get more schools participating in Your Move next year as we only have a few this year.

Following the online session, I am looking at updating the information that I included above, to promote the Your Move Program as a Student Leadership Program, as students can be a powerful way to influence the school's travel behaviour. Principals, teachers and parents can help lead the initiative to improve traffic around the school, but it is most effective when the students get involved. Students help to take the message home and are generally keen to walk or ride to school when it is made into a fun activity or adventure. 50% of children would like to walk or ride to school. 50% live less than 1 km from school. Your Move staff and resources can help them to do that.

I also was interested in School Traffic Management Plans and found a good template at the following link. https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/traffic-and-transport/public-transport/school-transport/school-traffic-management-plans The Cockburn Traffic and Transport Team meet with principals, teachers and parents regarding traffic issues. We deal with Traffic Management Plans for various projects throughout the city, so we are looking at using this plan or similar to help guide the various schools and encourage them to set up parent led Traffic Management Groups - like Mount Lawley Primary School.

Thank you to the Your Move Team and everyone that presented at the Forum today, who shared their valuable insights about how to make active transport behaviour changes at schools.