STARS Spotlight – Tweedmouth Community Middle School
Find out how this STARS School became nominated for the Modeshift STARS National School Travel Awards
Behaviour Change seen at the school
Tweedmouth Community Middle has continued to raise the profile of sustainable travel and to encourage more pupils to cycle to school, taking part in numerous initiatives throughout the year; such as The Big Pedal, Bike Week, W2SW and also the lead up to the Tour of Britain. This has resulted in more pupils travelling actively to school with an increase of almost 13% in walking over 2 years and over one year an increase in the numbers cycling from 4.6% to 7% and scooting from 1.8% to 4%. During the Big Pedal the school achieved an average of 74% of pupils cycling over the 5 day challenge and also held other activities such as Superhero Days and Bikers Breakfasts using events to raise funds to improve their cycle and scooter storage facilities.
The school has 3 members of staff trained as Ride Leaders who act as role models to promote cycling, especially to girls who often lose interest in cycling at secondary age. The Ride Leaders have set up a bike club and at the end of term had fun rides to a local beach. The school is also heavily involved in the Tour of Britain this September, with one of the stages starting in Berwick and we hope that this will further increase the appetite for cycling which the school can build on this year.
Top 3 Achievements
- Continuing to raise the profile of cycling within school; by taking part in Bikeability, The Big Pedal, Bike Week, The Tour of Britain as well as a host of other cycling initiatives throughout the year the school has been able to encourage the take up of cycling and create a huge amount of enthusiasm.
- The school’s Green Ambassadors are involved in all the schools sustainable travel initiatives, helping run the Big Pedal, bikers breakfasts and cycle counts. As well as acting as positive role models for the rest of the school, they have also produced films to showcase their achievements to pupils and parents.
- Tour of Britain involvement has led to lots of opportunities to promote cycling, such as being involved in the local authority publicity photos and designing cycle jerseys for our regional competition. The school will also play an important part in the start of the stage events, with pupils involved in the cyclists ride out and also acting as mascots on the podium for the riders ‘signing on’ at the start of the race. In addition the rest of the school, 315 pupils are going to watch the race set off in Berwick, this has all cemented Tweedmouth’s reputation as being a school who loves cycling!
Why the local authority has nominated this school
Tweedmouth Community Middle School deserves to be recognised for their continuing work to encourage active travel and in particular cycling to school. School staff including the School Travel Champion and Headteacher are committed to delivering a programme of initiatives including W2SW, The Big Pedal and Bike Week and embedding these into the school year, as well as delivering a wide range of other initiatives such as Bikers Breakfasts, led bike rides as well as encouraging take up of Bikeability, setting up a Park and Stride and promoting road safety to pupils. The school also looks for ways to incorporate sustainable travel into the curriculum using bike counts to produce graphs in maths (CU8) and learning how to read bus timetables (PT6). Also having previously encouraged staff to complete Ride Leader and Cycle Maintenance training has enabled the school to deliver a wider range of cycling activities, which they have been able to tailor to their needs and deliver independently.
