Evaluation - Baseline Report
About this page
Ride2School is being comprehensively evaluated by a team lead by Dr Jan Garrard of the School of Health and Social Development at Deakin University.
Baseline Report
The Baseline Report is the first of many reports about the Ride2School Program. It contains data collected from students, parents and teachers at 13 schools.
Data collection methods included: (i) an individual, student-completed written survey of how students travelled to and from school on the day of the survey (Friday) and for the previous four days, including questions designed to measure their attitudes to different ways of travelling to and from school; and (ii) a questionnaire sent to parents asking about their child’s/children’s travel to school behaviour, and parents’ attitudes to school travel modes.
Study Group
- Baseline data have been collected in 13
- 603 grade 4-6 students (479 from program schools and 124 from comparison schools) completed the student survey (34.8% response rate), and 545 parents of grade 4-6 students (409 from program schools and 136 from comparison schools) completed the parent survey (33.3% response rate).
Key Findings
- Most students travel to school by car (43.7% of all trips to and from school in past five school days), followed by walking (29.8%), cycling (14.4%), scootering/skating (6.2%) and other (public transport) (5.8%).
- The difference in mode share between walking and cycling was mainly due to more students walking every day (13%) than cycling every day (6.2%).
- Rates of occasional cycling and walking were similar.
- 23% of students reported travelling to and from school by car only (note: parent data was higher - 30%).
- The majority of students’ trips to and from school were active (50.4%) (compared with 43.7% by car and other 5.8%).
- Modes of travel to and from school were similar.
Students Like...
- Amongst students, the most popular modes of travel to school were cycling (80% “really like a lot” or “like”), walking (69%) and scootering/skating (54%).
- Amongst students, car travel was the least popular (40%), with the most common response category for car travel being “I neither like nor dislike” (32%), indicating a fairly ‘neutral’ attitude to car travel.
- 94.9% of students owned a bicycle, 96.7% could ride a bicycle, and 91.0% of students rode a bicycle at weekends, after school or on holidays.
- 63.0% of students reported that at least one adult in their household rides a bicycle.
- 50.7% of students had done Bike Ed at school.
- 64.5% of students lived within 2km of school and 81.3% within 4km (parent-reported data).
- Most students usually travel to school with a parent or carer (69.3%), followed by siblings (35.5%), friends (21.7%) or alone (19.5%) (Note: multiple responses were permitted).
Parents are concerned about ...
- The main reasons parents reported for driving their children to school were “bad weather” (37.4%), “drop child off on way to work or other place” (36.7%), “concern about stranger danger/assault/abduction” (24.4%), “too far to walk/cycle” (23.3%), “driving is quicker than walking or cycling” (21.5%), and “crossing roads is too dangerous” (20.0%).
- Weather, and the convenience of car travel were more important reasons than road safety concerns, as was personal child safety (‘stranger danger’).
- The majority of parents reported that regular walking (63.3%) or cycling (57.1%) to school was a possibility for their child (‘regular’ was once a week or more).
- Nearly all households had one (35.2%) or two (55.0%) cars.
- 77.1% of responding parents rode a bicycle about once a month or less (including 38.2% never or rarely) (Note: the majority of responding parents were female – 87.3%).
- Conversely, 22.9% of responding parents rode a bicycle once or twice a week or more.
- 19.5% of households had a spouse or partner who rode a bicycle once or twice a week or more (22.1% of households had no spouse or partner).
In summary,
there appears to be considerable potential for promoting active travel to school. Most children prefer it, the majority of parents considered it a possibility for their child, and some of the main constraints (in terms of reasons for choosing car travel) are amenable to ‘perceptual change’ strategies (eg ‘bad weather’, ‘too far’, ‘too slow’).
Some factors that have been considered constraints appeared to be less important (eg carrying things to school, bicycle storage, some traffic conditions). Cycling in particular, appears to have potential for increased participation. Unlike walking, cycling (as well as scootering and skating) is currently an occasional rather than a regular means of travelling to school.
However, nearly all students own and can ride a bike, nearly all ride bicycles outside school hours, cycling is the most popular means of travelling to school, and two-thirds of students live within 2km of school. Most parents ride a bicycle at least occasionally, with about one-fifth being regular cyclists.
Given that the majority of students travel to school with their parent/carer, and that parents/carers are likely to make the travel-to-school decisions, there may be value in directing some future strategies at parents.
