Year 6 at Brackenbury school have been involved in a project, concerning
issues of Safety in the local environment. The urban studies team (Sue
and Iayen) came to work with us on three occasions. We are very grateful
to them for all their help and for inspiring us with such a good project.
One of the first things we did was hold a class discussion about safety
issues which might be a problem in the local area, where we live. We talked
about the streets, street lighting, road crossing, security cameras, traffic
and its dangers, rubbish and dangerous places.
These issues became our 6 main headings with which to focus on. We wanted
to find out more details about these issues and how they affect us in
our environment.
Logically, the next step was to take the class for a walk in the local
area and conduct a safety audit. We walked up and down the Goldhawk Road,
occasionally going into side streets, to look for evidence of grafitti,
vandalism and security.
We recorded all of our findings onto an environmental checklist sheet
and this helped us to highlight our main concerns within the area.
The results showed that the amount of rubbish and dumped waste was a big
problem. Rubbish attracts rats and rats spread diseases. There is also
a big problem with larger dumped waste like furniture, electrical appliances
even cars. There was also household rubbish around this. Dog mess was
also found to be quite a big problem.
The speed of traffic in the Goldhawk Road also concerned us. Drivers seemed
to speed along and care very little for pedestrians.
On returning the classroom, we then set up a questionnaire and asked all
the pupils of Brackenbury School for their opinion. Two members of the
group sent a questionnaire to their local councillors as well.
We
asked questions like:
Have you noticed any grafitti in the streets?
Do you feel safe walking in the backstreets?
Is there too much rubbish in our streets?
The children’s parliament took this questionnaire to every class
and we collected number data, which we could turn into percentage results.
Some of our findings were as follows:
72% of the 300 children in the streets thought there was too much rubbish
in the area.
62% have seen vandalism in our streets.
84% have noticed graffiti in the area, on roads signs and walls.
In the next session, we went to the Urban Studies centre in Hammersmith
and we were lucky enough to be able to interview 4 people.
They were Mr Steve Beverley he is the H/F Travel Plan Co-ordinator, PC
Mark Denny is the youth Liaison policeman for our area, Mr Terence Young
is H/F Community Safety Officer and Mr Rob Orchudesh is the Principal
Road Safety Officer.
We showed each of them our pie charts and data and explained our environmental
concerns to them. In return, they gave us some ideas that we should to
do to improve things. For example, we need to write another letter requesting
the return of a lollipop lady to our school, on the advice of Mr Rob Orchudesh.
Mr Steve Beverley suggested we made posters to issue to local schools,
raising awareness to the need for traffic calming schemes.
Mr Terence Young wrote a letter on our behalf, the London Electricity
Board asking them to clean up a dangerous, disused site which could be
a cause for concern. We are very grateful to him for listening to our
concerns and acting upon them.
PC Denny already has regular contact with Brackenbury school.
Our proposal for action to improve safety in the local area would be to
go ahead with the posters for schools, raise awareness to the issues.
Following up the letter to improve the disused site to ensure it is made
safer and continue to fight for a lollipop lady to return to our school.
Thank you for listening to our concerns about safety in our environment.
We have enjoyed the chance to work with the Urban Studies Centre team
very much and would like to thank them again for involving us in such
important work.
