Parents driving kids just 280m on average to Melbourne school
They’re blocking driveways and hogging the drop off zone — now parents at one east Melbourne school have been urged to ditch cars after the principal made this surprising discovery.
Education
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A school where four out of five kids are driven an average of just 280m to be dropped off and picked up has urged families to consider ditching their cars.
Croydon Hills Primary School said parking congestion around the Campaspe Drive school would be solved if families, weather permitting, chose alternatives like walking.
Like many schools, Croydon Hills is juggling parking, drop offs and safety for children at the start and end of the school day.
Reminders to parents to take care to not break road rules and block driveways have been issued.
Croydon Hills principal Christian Holdsworth said after discussions around carparking at the school he took a look at transport data.
“I was surprised to see that 583 (79.32 per cent) of our students are regularly driven to school with their average distance just 280m,” Mr Holdsworth, who began as principal at the school this term, said.
“I encourage families to discuss their transport options and, weather permitting, look at alternative modes of transport in the future.
“This will not only alleviate some of our carparking and drop off issues, but aid in our families’ general health and wellbeing.”
While Mr Holdsworth is new to the school, parents have been getting reminders about blocking the driveways of annoyed neighbours and hogging the drop off zone for months.
Last year parents were told the 30 second drop off zone was not the place for long kisses and cuddles and to avoid having school bags in the boot to streamline the process.
At countless schools, local councils regularly attend school drop off points to help regulate parents who over stay drop off zones, double park to let their children out of the car, park over driveways and stop too close to school crossings and intersections.
The combination of parents behaving badly and children being driven to school has been the subject of research.
Earlier this year, the Australian Catholic University published research based on a survey of 700 Victorian households which found 60 per cent of primary school children did not walk or cycle to school, even those living less than 750 metres from the school gate.
It found that trip chaining, where time poor parents combine the school run with a commute to work or errands, meant children were often missing out on exercise.
Traffic woes have led to furious debate at many schools around Melbourne in recent years - including Mt Waverley Secondary College, Oakleigh South Primary and Ivanhoe Primary.
Active transport expert Alison Carver, from ACU’s Mary MacKillop Institute for Health Research, referred to the creation of a “back seat generation”.
“We found that many children living within 750m of school were being driven to school.
Convenience is a key factor for many parents, but there is often concern about traffic and ‘stranger danger’,” she told the Herald Sun.
“Ironically, parents contribute to the traffic issues by driving their children to school, while perceived convenience may be reduced if there is traffic congestion at the school gates.”
She suggested schools and parents work together to identify suitable walking and cycling routes to school.
“Obviously if roads are unsafe and there is no pedestrian infrastructure this needs to be addressed by local governments so that residential streets and areas around schools are walkable environments,” Dr Carver said.
She said there were age appropriate considerations.
“Parents may encourage older children to walk/cycle to school without adult accompaniment or walk with younger children while they build their skills,” she said.
She cautioned that children under the age of 10 years tended not to be able to anticipate the speed of cars and may have difficulty crossing roads if there is no suitable infrastructure.
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Dr Carver said schools could help to show that walking and cycling to school could be fun with health benefits by running walk to school breakfasts. integrating it into the classwork and offering house points for active travel.
VicHealth’s Walk To School month in October was a worthwhile way to encourage walking and cycling to school throughout the year.
Vic Health physical activity manager Melanie Chisholm suggested a staged approach to encouraging children to walk to school.
She said running the program over a month helped to change habits.
Ms Chisholm said if parents were anxious about young children walking to school they could manage it in a gradual way.
Parents may be able to park some blocks away from the school and then walk them to the school gate, encouraging exercise and avoiding the stress of parking close to school.
She said as children get older they will become more independent and be able to walk alone or with other children.
Ms Chisholm said community walking buses, in which parents take turns to escort children to school, were a great idea.
“Our research is telling us that one in five children are not getting the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity each day,” she said.
There also was a rising incidence of obesity among young children.
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