Supporting your school
Kender Primary School is very representative of the area, which means it ' s super diverse – lots of different languages are spoken, and we ' ve got ethnically diverse teachers, which is super important for the kids to see. I think that ' s a real strength of our school, and it’ s a really lovely community. As we ' re in a neighbourhood with quite high levels of deprivation, with a lot of main roads, traffic and pollution, and a lot of high-rise flats, the school is a really important place for the community.
Our PTA has a core base of really helpful, supportive volunteers, but we have some challenges engaging with the parents. It ' s not easy to get volunteers, and there ' s still a lot of the parent community we feel we ' re not managing to communicate with. As we have parents from lots of different backgrounds, and many haven ' t gone to school in the UK themselves, it can make getting involved more intimidating for them. I think quite a lot of our parents would like to help, but they ' re not confident speaking
English, so that ' s a barrier. But we ' re trying to meet people where they ' re at, for example by translating our communications, and also through our bike bus initiative.
“ Bike bus is just such a brilliant initiative because it unites so many benefits – whatever you ' re interested in, if it ' s children ' s physical activity, air quality, reducing vehicles going to school, road safety – there ' s just so many benefits.”
I’ ve been vaguely aware of the idea of a bike bus for a few years. I ' m really passionate about action on climate change and reducing carbon emissions, but I felt like I didn ' t have the capacity or confidence to start a bike bus myself. Then a new campaign started up in Lewisham, which is a parent-run group called Solve the School Run. They ' re really good. They do work specifically about reducing the number of cars at school runtime. It was my nudge to start the bike bus.
Although I ' m doing the bike bus under the Friends of Kender banner, three different schools are involved in it now. I knew at Kender we might struggle with numbers, and the other schools are really close by, so I thought it would be a good opportunity for us to do something together.
I started a WhatsApp group and managed to get people from the different schools added to it. I then sent an email around to the headteachers of all three schools. I started planning in September to launch it in the summer term because I wanted to give myself loads of time to promote it.
“ I didn ' t want bike bus to be a few families who are really into bikes and cycling with their kids. I knew I could get those people on board. What I wanted to do was encourage people who haven ' t thought about cycling or who don ' t see cycling with their children as a transport option.”
There are different ways of doing a bike bus. My bike bus is a weekly event, and we meet every Friday at a fixed point at 8.30am. When people hear‘ bus’, they often think it means collecting people from their houses. Some bike buses might do that, but we meet at a specific location.
As part of my goal to be inclusive, we welcome scooters as well as bikes. We have some parents who don ' t have bikes and just come on foot. I ' ve got one dad who just runs beside his daughter, which is great. We even had some roller skaters!
Images: Crispin Hughes, Paul Meyler
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