Schools, Colleges and University Toolkit
Case studies
Find out how other schools, the university and college have made cycling a bigger part of their students’ lives, and what effect it’s had.
Phil Clark – Teacher, 56
“We were one of the first schools to run Bike It in Exeter, in 2006. We had a strong school travel plan before that but were always hesitant with cycling because staff were nervous about the safety aspects of it. But with Bike It everyone really opened up, and now we actively encourage kids to cycle to school.
The instructors are always great with the children, who really enjoy the training. I cycle to school myself and I’m a firm believer in using cycling to improve kids’ concentration when they get into the classroom.
Now we have at least forty children cycling to school out of 360 on a daily basis when four years ago we had zero children cycling to school, and Cycle Exeter has funded a new bike shelter to accommodate our extra cyclists.
We put on lots of events – biking breakfasts, free ID stamping from the police on bikes – Andrei Burton came and wowed the kids too. One day we ran a ‘bling your bike’ competition. 150 kids cycled to school that day – there were prizes for the most spectacular efforts!
A big factor in getting children to cycle, and their parents to let them, is confidence. The Bike It training really helps with reassuring them both that cycling on the roads is very possible to do safely. Some parents are apprehensive at first, but then when they see the positive effects cycling has on their kids – health, concentration, independence – they want to get them signed up to the higher levels of training.
The Cycle Exeter campaign is fantastic. It’s really raised the profile of cycling and made it easier for us to convince parents to let their children cycle. We didn’t have the time to put into getting training for the children and they’ve made it really easy. I definitely feel like times are changing and cycling is very much still on the rise – thankfully.”
Pete Kempton – Science teacher and Cycling Enrichment Coordinator, Exeter College
“Exeter College has approx14,000 full and part time students, each of whom has the opportunity to participate in an enrichment programme – which is a chunk of time taken out often on a Wednesday afternoon to take part in extra curricular activities. I look after the cycling club during this time on top of my usual teaching.
Activities I’ve arrange include a couple of trips to the velodrome, which were really popular, and we plan to do more. I’ve also run workshops on how to repair your bike with a local bikeshop, and taken students on simple cycle trails and some longer road rides. It’s really helped to engage them and encourage more of them to take up cycling and bring their friends along the next time.
We went to a mountain bike taster session in Haldon at the beginning of the year. Cycle Exeter provided the coaches for this and everyone had a great time – we’re going back soon. Cycle Exeter also helped to support the Exeter Schools Mountain Bike Project which provides six free mountain bike sessions per school in Exeter and there are about twenty free bikes to use up there for the students, so it’s been made really accessible. Not only is it a healthy activity; it’s also exciting and a great thing for the students to do in their spare time – quite different to most other activities that are available to them. Now, I’m taking a mountain bike leader’s course with a few others so I can take the students myself – it’s good fun!
We promote cycling to our 900 – strong staff via our website with information about cycling. It’s been quite successful in encouraging people and we plan on doing more like putting some suggested local routes up on the site. We’ve also got a Bicycle User Group (BUG) where we’ve started up the Cycle to Work scheme, planned a few sociable cycle rides, and installed some cycling parking funded by Cycle Exeter.
We’re also planning on involving staff in cycling from the very beginning by making it part of their induction to learn about how to get to work on a bike and help them with training if they need it.
The more people we can encourage to cycle the better. It’s a great way to help students save money, and there are such fantastic cycle routes in Exeter that it’s safe and easy for students to start cycling to college.
Jude Fleming, also member of the BUG group, agrees: “It’s absolutely important to promote cycling – there’s very little parking around here and it’s expensive to park in city centre, so it’s convenient. Also cycling keeps everyone healthy and reduces absenteeism amongst staff and students.”
Karen Gallagher, Sustainability Manager – The University of Exeter
“The University of Exeter launched a sustainable travel plan in September 2007 which strongly encourages cycling as a healthy and environmentally friendly way of getting around. We already had a bicycle user group in place – a group of staff who get together a few times a year and work on encouraging cycling facilities – and a travel plan was an easy way to progress cycling even further by setting ourselves targets and positioning cycling as part of an overall integrated policy.
We also have a cycle forum with representatives from across the whole of the University; the student cycle society, Bicycle User Group (BUG), student union, staff and security. It’s a consultation group and very much a joint initiative, which is very effective because we have buy-in and input from all departments of the university, and things run smoothly because everybody helps make decisions.
It works really well having both groups. The BUG focuses on infrastructure issues and getting staff cycling and the cycle forum thinks about how we can encourage everyone to get on their bikes. We have had some great successes – a staff cycle scheme means employees don’t pay taxes on bikes and can pay for them in instalments through their salaries. We also recently launched a lock scheme where students and staff can buy subsidised locks – they would usually cost £35 but are on sale for £5. It’s an ongoing scheme but on the launch day the police came along and put security marks on bikes and gave out advice.
Cycling is a great way for students to save money and initiatives such as these really encourage them. I think it’s important to create a culture where every provision has been made to make taking up cycling as easy as possible.
We’re lucky to have a trained cycle assessor here, our sports and wellness officer, and he’ll give cycle confidence lessons to anyone feeling like they could do with them. We also have an onsite maintenance kit for bicycles which staff and students can use. This was really easy to set up and is a simple, practical way of making sure that students and staff are covered for things like punctures.
To communicate our announcements and encouragement of cycling throughout the university, the student union regularly write articles for the student newspaper. This is really important because if messages can come from the students’ mouths then they’re much more effective. We also contribute to the electronic newsletter that goes out to everyone and update information on the website on travel information, events and our regularly organised cycle outings.
We held a bike day in the spring where we had a Dr Bike, staff from local cycle shops to give advice, information on route planning, some timed cycle trials and lunchtime rides. A lot of new cyclists came to see what it was all about. It’s important to run outreach events like this so people can experience for themselves what getting on a bike is like and that we’re really serious about making cycling a reality for more and more people in the university.
We’re committed to reducing our carbon emissions, and cycling is an easy way of doing that. We’re already planning the next stages – a pool of bikes and some more cycle parking, which Cycle Exeter will help fund. Getting our 2,700 staff and 14,255 students on their bikes is a great way of keeping them healthy and happy.
