Barley Lane School is currently involved in an air quality project to try and increase children, parents’ and staff’s awareness of pollution and the issues it can cause.
We are working hard to encourage our children to choose a more sustainable way of coming to school each day, if possible, rather than by car.
Recently some of the school’s eco‐ambassadors observed traffic and driver behavior at drop off time (8.45‐8.55am) on one morning outside the Barley Lane gate, Huxley Drive gate, Ecclestone Crescent gate and the Barley Lane gate by our nursery.
This is what we observed:
- Cars parking on the SCHOOL KEEP CLEAR ZIG‐ ZAGS ‐ 36 CARS
- Cars parking across DRIVEWAYS/DROPPED KERBS ‐ 22 CARS
- Cars parking on DOUBLE YELLOW LINES ‐ 20 CARS
- Cars parking on ‐ KERB/PAVEMENT ‐ 17 CARS
- Cars dropping children off in the MIDDLE OF THE ROAD ‐ 4 CARS
- Cars stopping or parking WITHOUT TURNING ENGINE OFF ‐ 23 CARS
The eco‐ambassadors will be out on our school gates again to observe our school traffic. Hopefully, we will see an improvement in the number of drivers engaging in these behaviours, some of which are particularly dangerous such as dropping children off in the middle of the road.
We now have additional racks where children can safely leave their bicycles and scooters. Coming to school on foot, cycling or scooting obviously helps to cut down on air pollution and we are encouraging our school community to use these means of getting to school wherever possible.
We really need all of your support in reducing the amount of air pollution for our children. We will be shortly sharing with you our bespoke ‘Walk Zone@ map which shows the least polluted streets in our vicinity that children could walk down on their way to school to avoid higher levels of pollution.
