Web chat with Dr Stephen Ladyman MP

Road Safety Education in schools

Posted by Norma on November 9th 2006

As Road Safety Officer it is very difficult to have input into the school day because of pressures schools face in striving to meet various targets - especially SATS.
Is it possible to have joined up thinking at ministerial level so that potential conflict may be avoided by various professional groups striving to meet different targets?

This question is now closed.

Thank you for your comments

Posted by Norma on 09/11/2006 - 17:23

I appreciate all you say and have personally have used some of the approaches you have mentioned (and some others too) to "get into" schools. In Darlington I introduced road safety poetry days but I still find teachers are so VERY concerned about using up valuable curriculum time for something which is not specifically given a lot of importance in the national curriculum. e.g it is very difficult, though not impossible (if one is persistent!) to get schools to participate in cycle training before May. It would give Road Safety Officers a wonderful boost and make our lives easier if we had more

more

School education

Posted by Dr Stephen Ladyman on 09/11/2006 - 17:05

That's true and this is an issue. But 3M have recently produced a web site that provides not only games and fun stuff for kids but teaching materials for educators. This means that teachers can incorporate road safety messages in other lessons. For example, an IT lesson can task a child to find road safety material on the web, essay writing lessons can use a road safety theme, art can incorporate road safety ideas too. This is not the only source of these types of materials there are others too and the DfT can let you know where they are to be found.