New scheme to teach hundreds of pupils cycle safety
Published 21 February 2012
Hundreds of children will be given free cycle safety training at school to help boost their confidence before they start to ride on the road, council chiefs announced today.
Southwark Council, which is backing the scheme, expects nearly 500 children will benefit from the £22,500 project this year.
Children in 16 schools throughout the borough are being offered the opportunity to spend an hour each week after school gaining confidence in riding their bicycles.
Starting this week (20 February 2012) the after school sessions are designed to be fun but also teach children essential skills to help them become life-long cyclists, such as planning safe routes and even some bike maintenance. Clubs start after this half term for most pupils and will run through to the summer term.
In addition, all participating schools have been offered the chance to attend a half-day mountain biking and track training session in July at the Herne Hill Velodrome which is currently undergoing a £400,000 revamp to transform it a a multi-purpose cycling centre for the whole community.
The bike clubs complement the current programme of bikeability cyclist training which teaches children to cycle safely on the road. The bike club programme is divided into three blocks of six weeks with 12 children attending each six week block
Cllr Barrie Hargrove, Southwark's cabinet member for transport, said: "This is a great opportunity for youngsters to gain confidence on their bikes in a safe, supervised environment.
"We hope that more and more children will join schemes like this and eventually choose to ride to school. At the moment 30 per cent of school kids in Southwark say they'd like to 'bike it' to school each day, but only three per cent do.
"This project is part of Southwark Council's strategy to make the borough one of the 'bike friendliest' in the capital within five years."
