Back in the saddle

SCHOOLS

Once it was normal for children to cycle to school - but now only a tiny minority do. Andy Sharman meets the people who're steering the Government's Pounds 55m drive to put pupils back on two wheels

Four pm on a busy road in Bedford and cars are sitting bumper to bumper. It's a scene played out in urban centres across England each morning and evening, as adults drive in and out of work, and children get ferried to and from school. One in five of these cars is doing trips of less than two miles.

Just off this main artery, which runs out towards the Bedford suburb of Biddenham, is St Gregory's RC Middle School. It is here that Jason Falconer is leading a group of seven young cyclists on the playground - and leading the fight against the gridlock at the end of the road.

Falconer is the Bike It officer for Bedford, Luton and St Albans and he is on the front line in the battle to get our children cycling. Every day he boards a train with his folding bicycle to visit schools in the three cities to promote cycling. This can involve anything from "Dr Bike" sessions, where he helps children service their bikes, to Bikeability classes - cycling proficiency for the 21st century (see box) - and even classroom lessons covering health, geography and history.

"I'm 37 now," says Falconer, "but when I was at school, cycling and walking were absolutely the norm. In fact, if one of your mates was dropped off in the car, especially at Year 7 in secondary school, you'd be like, 'aaaagh!' - they would be shamed because, why are they getting dropped off? Can't they make their own way around? But it's reversed a bit hasn't it?"

From being the norm a generation ago, cycling is now seen as a lost art. Less than 1 per cent of the distance travelled on British roads is done by bike, down from around a third in the 1940s and Fifties. On average, only 2 per cent of children cycle to school; some put the figure even lower.

But the rot is about to be stopped if the Government gets its way. In January this year, 140m was pledged by Ruth Kelly, Transport Secretary, to be channelled through the co-ordinating body Cycling England, over three years. Of this money, 55m will go towards cycling in schools. This will cover the costs of training cycling instructors up to the national standard; promoting sports partnership schemes such as Go-Ride, run by British Cycling; and paying the equivalent of 40 a child over three years for schools and local authorities to get children up to Bikeability Level 2, which says they are safe to use their bikes on the roads.

Cycling has of late been establishing more of a presence in the national transport budget. Since 2005, six UK towns have been showcasing what local authorities can do with funding (500,000). Last week, 11 new demonstration towns were announced, including cycle-mad Cambridge and Falconer's home town of Blackpool, while Bristol was unveiled as Britain's first "cycling city". And, most importantly for schools, each new flagship town will get a Bike It officer, showing just how respected this scheme is.

"This has been a fantastically successful programme," says Phillip Darnton of Cycling England. Bike It schools have routinely been quadrupling the number of children regularly cycling to school. In Aylesbury, one of the previous wave of demonstration towns, the percentage of children cycling to Bike It schools increased from 3 per cent to 12 per cent in a year. Twelve per cent might not seem a lot, but Darnton is stoical.

"We're not talking about being able to get every school pupil cycling to school come rain or shine every day," he says. "But if we get just 20 children cycling in a school, it becomes an OK thing to do. It's about that critical mass. If we could get 5 per cent of trips to school done on bicycles we would have transformed the traffic in most cities."

Bike It is run by the sustainable transport charity Sustrans, which tries to help pupils overcome whatever it is that prevents them from cycling to school.

More often not, this is a combination of three things: concerns over bike parking, lack of knowledge about safe routes to school, and fears over road safety.

"Parents need to have their concerns addressed," says Falconer. "Children need to see how fun and easy it is to use the bike for school journeys. We don't go in and say, 'Right, you can go and ride on the nearest road available.' We very much look at the circumstances of the school, and always are looking for the best routes, the best paths."

To help in this, Falconer often teaches cycling-related lessons during school hours - all as part of the curriculum. He does map- reading sessions for geography where children find the best cycling routes to school - he's a trained orienteering coach. He does personal, social and health education (PSHE), in which he tests the heart rates of children, simulating driving, walking and cycling. He does design and technology where the class studies the bicycle. And he delivers history lessons, too, including on the Victorians and how the bicycle helped in the fight for women's suffrage.