The Lone Biker: March 2013

With this year’s Big Pedal drawing to a close it is worth noting the value that the event and cycling itself brings to a school.

Numbers of competing schools in East Ayrshire has risen in the 3 years since its inception and the numbers of pupils taking part in schools has rapidly increased, even in those schools who have taken part since the first Big Pedal in 2011.

While many will see the Big Pedal as “a bit of fun”, while it certainly is, it has huge value to the school and contributes to each participating schools delivery of the 7 Principles of Curriculum for Excellence.

Challenge and Enjoyment

The Big Pedal provides an excellent challenge for your school. The challenges of sustaining an event for 3 weeks is in of itself a huge challenge but as many schools have proved it can be done.

The event also provides an even challenge with results proportionally based on the size of your school so big schools don’t have the upper hand on smaller schools as so often happens with other sporting activities.

The challenge is fair throughout the school with primary 1’s contributing to the challenge on an equal footing with primary 7’s, again highlighting the difference between this activity and other sporting challenges.

Children love to play. As we all have grown up we remember how fun it was to play on our bikes and by taking part in the Big Pedal, quite simply a fun enjoyable activity becomes part of everyday school life.

Progression

Every competition offers real chance for progression. The Big Pedal has this in abundance through the competition nationally in Scotland and the UK, locally in our authority or in small fun inter class competitions.

It further progresses the recognition of schools in a national forum and can spark interest in participation in Bikeability, a 3 tiered progression of cycling skills for primary aged children, including cycling proficiency (Bikeability 2).

Breadth

A wide variety of learning opportunities extend from the Big Pedal. It is a vehicle by which road safety and personal safety can be discussed and encouraged. It allows school ownership of good practice when cycling despite laws not stating the need for helmets or high viz clothing.

It introduces the aspect of physical fitness by introducing extra activity to everyday life.

Children have the chance to compete at multiple levels.

With such a high volume of bikes and scooters it allows the pupils a chance to be involved in planning the strategic use of areas within the school grounds for safe and appropriate storage of bikes and to be part of safe rules of practice.

The school, by taking part in the Big Pedal has the perfect tool for developing community awareness with adults able to share in the competition and success and also to work in in partnership with local professionals such as lollipop men, police and councillors in again adopting safe practice and promotion of achievement.

Depth

The Big Pedal provides opportunity for physical education outside the gym, indeed it brings to the fore the very notion of being physically educated. Its practice shows children that not all physical education must happen in the gym, that it can be a part of everyday routine and that fun leisure activities can also improve our health and wellbeing.

The Big Pedal is physical education on a whole school basis. The above statement is not restrictive to age, in fact with the Big pedal incorporating children and adult involvement it is physical education for 3-?.

Personalisation and Choice

Pupils took ownership of the Big Pedal. They designed their own team jerseys for their class teams and chose a winner. They were involved in the planning of parking areas. They were responsible for their own safety (with informed help) on their commute. The pupils took responsibility for filling out their own scores and giving out our incentive raffle tickets. Each class pupil council member chose the team name for their class.

Most importantly it was up to each pupil whether they wanted to take part in the Big pedal and how much involvement they wanted. They took part in huge numbers.

Coherence

The Big Pedal ran alongside P.E. and all other subjects. It did not impinge or replace any subject in adding its own value to the school. It was entirely conducive to the sporting programme in our school and again did not replace any sport already in place.

It ran in perfect cohesion with the school day becoming an integral part of our working week.

Relevance

Never has it been more relevant to introduce cycling to schools as a tool for delivering CfE. If the subject is relevant to the children then the learning will be successful.

We have just had an Olympics where our cyclists won the vast majority of the gold medals. Indeed a cyclist, Chris Hoy, became the most decorated medallist in British Olympic history and has his own velodrome in Glasgow. Britain currently has the Tour De France winner and he is also the sports Personality of the year in Bradley Wiggins. Last year Mark Cavendish, another brit was World Champion. Many of our track cycling stars are women and more famous than the men which is a rarity in sport providing positive role models for girls. Sporting heroes are always relevant to children.

Almost every child has a bike and every adult can remember having one so bikes are relevant to children.

Bicycles do infinity miles to the gallon, a relevant eco message to today’s children and tomorrow’s adults.

With current childhood obesity and activity stats all reading poorly we must remember that cycling a bike = exercise. What could be more relevant?

So what next?

The children are doing their bit with their big pedals but it has to be worth something. They have pushed the limits of what’s available to them.

The following statements may be Utopian in their vision but the children have pedalled big, why shouldn’t the adults?

· Proper cycle lanes should not only surround our schools but link the schools in each learning partnership. This would allow the cycling to continue and as a result ease parking problems at schools, reduce use of taxis and busses and associated costs, reduce the pressure on our roads at key times in the day, reduce the use of roads in general again saving cost to local authority in maintenance and maintain commuting by bicycle throughout secondary years which would hopefully develop a culture of health and fitness beyond school years. Surely the point of CfE.

· Adequate storage for bikes at all schools and repair of current shelters. Where vandalism has taken place the children could be involved in planning. They are always the best local knowledge experts in an area. If you build it, they will come!

· Cycle scheme for council employees is offered by East Ayrshire. Cycle scheme to provide tax free bikes for parents of pupils. This both promotes fitness and local business. Also where we offer cycle scheme we should update or create the proper facilities for storage and changing in the place of work.

· Promote the services of local business more efficiently. Not only is this good for local business it often gets the best deal for budgeting parents and promotes enterprise links in our school and authority.

· Every school has a member of staff trained to and given time to deliver Bikeability 1, 2 and 3. The delivery of 1 and to should be in Primary while 3 should be developed in Secondary schools as a viable transition activity.

Copenhagen, the bicycle-friendliest place on the planet, publishes a biannual Bicycle Account, and buried in its pages is a rather astonishing fact

“When all these factors are added together the net social gain is DKK 1.22 per cycled kilometre. For purposes of comparison there is a net social loss of DKK 0.69 per kilometre driven by car.” So we are talking about a net economic gain to society of 22 pence for every bicycle mile travelled and a 13 pence loss for every mile driven.
And what are all the “social gains” that bicycling grants the city of Copenhagen?
A number of factors are included in the equation such as transport costs, security, comfort, branding/tourism, transport times and health.
Considering that both sitting and car exhaust kill you, it’s a safe bet a lot of the net benefit to society is simply that cycling makes you less of a drag on health services.
Since the total health benefit of Copenhagen residents’ healthy cycling habits is DKK 5.51 per km, the annual benefit is worth the equivalent of approx. DKK 2.0 billion.
Which means that Copenhagen, a city of 1.2 million people, saves $357 million a year on health costs because something like 80 percent of its population commutes by bicycle, even in winter. That’s $300 per person per year. Clearly, the reason the new Danish minister of the interior said she’d “rather invest in cycle tracks than freeways,” is that only one of those has a positive return.
(Information quoted from Grist.org(2013))

The example from Denmark shows just what can be achieved and it can be done here.
The facts don’t lie.

· In Copenhagen commuter rates by bicycle are 36%.

· During the Big Pedal commuter rates by bicycle by pupils of Crosshouse primary School 63%.

Through the Big Pedal children have shown us again who has the Big Picture!