End of Year Hands Up Survey

Sarah Adams
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Earlier this week we completed our End of Year 'Hands Up' Travel survey and have begun reflecting on our results. As mentioned in recent posts we are in the process of reflecting on the different ways we are educating students about active travel and these survey results provide a fantastic way to see evidence of positive change.

We completed the survey via our online survey link once again and reinforced the process with whole staff emails and messages in the daily notices. As we have dozens of mentor groups across the school, this reduces the needs for paper and allows all staff to quickly and easily send their data through. It also makes it much easier for us to collate it and we can easily refer to it in years to come.

Our Year 12s have finished now and our population of kids has shifted. Of course many more of our Year 11 students are driving, so this may account for the increase we have seen in students arriving by car. One student asked if there were different categories for how many students were in a single car which is a great thought. It really shows they're thinking about efficient travel and "ride share" options.

Our data for the end of the year shows an increase in both students walking to school and those walking. This is really rewarding as it shows that our efforts to promote these methods of travel are paying off, particularly in terms of students on bikes.

According to the data there were less students arriving by bus on the day of the survey but it remains our student's main method of travel. One mentor teacher reported that students asked why they were only asked how they arrived and not how they planned to get home. They said they might get dropped off at school in the morning but then take the bus home. This really reflects student's attitudes about wanting to show their sustainable practices which was a wonderful thing to hear. We are considering adding this question next year to see if there is a large difference between our AM and PM travel choices.

Overall we are really pleased with the gains made.The fact we have double the number of students riding to school is a great result as this is a key area we are planning around for 2020. It means the smalls steps taken already are effective and we're on the right track!
It will be interesting to see how next year compares.

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James (Your Move)

Hi Sarah - thanks for sharing your analysis of your HUS. I'm glad to see you have really seen the positives of the increases in the particularly active modes of walking and cycling. Even though it shows a 1% increase in car trips, the mode share of car remains at 29% so the increase really isn't significant. As you mentioned it seems to have come predominantly from public transport - so perhaps it is the more distant new license holders embracing the novelty of the car - whereas the closer students may have embraced the freedoms of walking and cycling. Either way your successes are something to be proud of! You would have automatically received 50 points when you uploaded your results and today I have given you 10 points for your story details and another 10 points for your high level of reflection and thoughts of how to improve your survey next year.

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