Our Ref: RJS/DMB 9 March 2016

Dear Parent/Guardian,

Re: Year Nine Walk to School Week (18th – 24th March)

This week I will be visiting year nineassembly to talk to students about the ‘walk to school week’. However I thought it was also important to share details of this week with you as parents and carers.

Hampshire County Council wishes to encourage more students to walk to school. They rightly recognise the health benefits and environmental advantages of more children walking to school.

As a school we would like to move to a position where many more students walked safely to and from school each day. Therefore we will be piloting this initiative with year nine students in the last week of term. If we get a positive response to the scheme we will encourage students from all years to walk to school in the summer term.

There are three ways that you as parents can encourage your children to take part.

If you live nearby (no more than twenty minutes walk away) please encourage or continue to allow your child to walk to school during the pilot week. Hopefully they will feel the benefit of a daily walk and want to continue with walking to school in the summer term.

Park and Stride. If you would normally drop off your child by car, drop them away from the school site and get them to walk the rest of the way to school. This would certainly ease congestion and cut pollution outside the school grounds. On the back of this letter is a map of suggested drop off points along Frendstaple Road. This site has been visited and checked for its appropriateness by a Hampshire road safety officer. In the long term the school will look to identify other nearby sites.

If you live far away and your child uses a bus each morning then clearly walking directly to school is not an option. However you could ensure that they walked to and from their bus stop each day and that you refrained from dropping them off by car at the bus stop.

We will be recording details of each child’s journey to school during the pilot week and would hope to see some shifts of behaviour during the week. I look forward to your support during the week and beyond.

Yours sincerely,

Mr R J Smith