Brackenbury
Sustainable School Journeys

Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning. We are Brackenbury Primary school, I am Jerome Noel and I am Rhian Bowen. We would like to feedback our research and put forward solutions for the issue of environmentally friendly and sustainable school journeys.

We are proud to announce to you that we walked, yes walked to this meeting today. We left our cars behind, braved the elements, (not to mention the pollution) side stepped all the buses and lorries and used every lollipop lady we could find! (But there weren’t any!) Look I know that but don’t tell them...
Our Year 6 class have been working with the Urban Studies team to research sustainable modes of transport, for the future as well as the present.

In the initial lesson we looked at lots of photos and the class decided that we were mostly concerned about rising levels of pollution, which will only get worse in the future if no action is taken now. The discussion led to the concerns of transport and pollution.

We shared ideas about the modes of transport that were environmentally friendly and ones which were not. Some people debated that walking or cycling were the best way to get around a congested city. Buses were suggested as a good second alternative but these were just the class opinions and we decided we needed to survey the entire school to collect their opinions.

We created a school questionnaire based on preferred methods of transport. To our horror we found a large number of children had not ever considered that pollution from vehicles is bad for us - or even worse they did not understand what the word pollution really meant. A Year 3 class cared more about pollution after it was explained more fully to them and they understood the concern better. As a class we voted that it is important for children to be made more aware of pollution and its effects on all out lives. Through carrying out the questionnaire we found out that 60% of pupils in the school walk to school, 30% travel by car and 10% take a bus or the tube.

The questionnaire did also highlight lots of other worrying facts. A small number of children who live near to the school were brought by car, when they could really walk. Some children gave honest reasons why they were not able to walk.

The results of the questionnaire were alarming. We wondered just how many adults really cared or bothered to consider the problems. Perhaps people just think there is nothing they can do to solve it?

Our next step was to get out into the urban environment and assess the levels of pollution for ourselves - a bit of field research. We observed our surroundings carefully and were appalled at our findings. The streets were terrible, the traffic was fast and filthy, pollution was all around us in many forms. We split into groups to undertake different tasks.

One group measured the levels of noise pollution made by cars using a decibel meter. In the Goldhawk Road the highest decibel was 90 that’s quite a dangerous level considering that the average would usually be about 40 decibels. We also made a tally of just how many cars, buses or lorries use the road in 5 minutes.

When we came back to school and pooled all the evidence, we decided to make an action plan. What could we as school children do to raise awareness to the problems we all face in our local area?

These were questions which we wanted to raise when we met council officers, a school deputy head teacher and a Friends of the Earth spokesperson at the Urban Studies centre, our third meeting with Sue and Ieuan.

We had an opportunity to speak to some Hammersmith Council officers, Paul Baker, Steve Beverley and Kristine Coan. Steve Beverley is the Travel Plan Coordinator. We asked him what he thought could be done. Like us he would like to see more children and parents walking to school or cycling or taking a bus. He also contacts local businesses to encourage adults to lessen congestion and pollution as well.

Steven Beverley told us he himself has a bike and uses it daily. We would need to make sure that children can get good cycling proficiency training, something which seems to have disappeared over the last few years!

The meeting was useful, it was good to know that Hammersmith Council do want to make things better for the future.

We got back to school and made a list of further things that we could now do to continue our campaign. Firstly we could design a poster or a leaflet for all school children making them aware of what pollution is and how it affects us all.

We could write a letter to the local councillors to report our findings and ask them how we can make sure progress is being made.

Perhaps in London we should encourage the use of electric cars in the future, for the present we could develop cars that run on less harmful fuels, this has begun to happen with some cars. We could even write to the Mayor Ken Livingstone to ask about his ideas for charging drivers to drive in inner London. It would be interesting to hear what long term problems he thinks might be solved.

We also feel it is not just pollution but congested that needs to be tackled. On our field research we found cars parked everywhere, even places they should not be. Parking and permit parking needs to be developed.

Our school have a link with a school in Holland who are undertaking a similar study to ours and we are in e-mail contact with them. The idea is that we will share results and get a European perspective to the issues of pollution and traffic congestion.

We would like to thank Sue and Ieuan on behalf of all the children from Brackenbury Primary School who took part in this study. We have really enjoyed being part of the Urban Studies team and have learnt a lot from doing this. Perhaps if more children had a chance to do similar projects then through education children and adults of the future might start taking better care of the environment and find ways of cutting pollution.