Queen Elizabeth High School students Step Up for better streets in Hexham
Students from Queen Elizabeth High School have been busy campaigning for safer streets in Hexham to help increase walking in the local area.
Supported by national charity Living Streets, through their Step Up Campaign to encourage secondary students to walk more, pupil’s are trialling a new resource to help look into the barriers to walking and to make suggestions about improving the local environment for those on foot. Their findings will be presented in a session on Monday to school governors, council officers, police officers and councillors in a session at the school.
In addition to presenting their findings, the pupils will also conduct a short walking audit to demonstrate the issues that pupils face on their walking commute everyday.
PHOTOCALL: Monday 25 January 2010. Journalists and photographers are urged to attend the walking audit at 14.00, to meet with the students and take photographs of those involved in the project.
Step Up, funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Wellbeing programme, is part of the Living Streets’ Walk to School Campaign. It targets teenagers and encourages them to use their knowledge and inspiration to create a fresh way of spreading the walking message.
Encouraging young people to take an interest in their local streets is a key way to increase the amount of walking they do. As it stands, a quarter of under 17s say they never walk for 20 minutes or more at a time, resulting in serious consequences for their health. In addition to this, government statistics show that over half of the population are likely to be clinically obese by 2050 as a result of the increasing inactivity of people today. To stop this becoming a reality, young people need to rethink their habits and fit in more daily activity. Walking to school is an easy way to do that and yet at secondary school age only 43% take the trip on foot and trips by car are increasing. Finding out what is stopping students from walking more, and providing answers, is the key aim of Step Up and the pupil’s campaign at Queen Elizabeth High School has kick started debate about what could be improved in local areas to increase walking.
Tony Armstrong, Chief Executive of Living Streets said:
“Less than half of secondary school pupils walk to school, which means they miss out on a regular source of exercise and socialising. We need to get back into the habit of walking short journeys, both to make sure our children know their own communities and are gradually given more independence, but also to ensure they aren’t getting used to sedentary lifestyles that will come to haunt them and their health in future years.
“The teens of today are the ones who have the power to make walking a popular choice once again and engaging with them to find out what would make a difference to them a key way of doing this. When we are at secondary school we truly start tasting independence, making the free choices and developing the habits that we will carry with us throughout our adult lives. If we can help teenagers make walking the natural choice again, we have a huge opportunity to prevent the scale of obesity as predicted.”
Andrew Hedley, Deputy Head of Queen Elizabeth High School said:
'It is great to see them so enthused and creative - it's what education should be about!'
Published by: Travel Actively on Monday April 12 2010
