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news
Ellis Guilford School (picture via Googel Street View).PNGNottingham school bans pupils from cycling until they have passed safety test
A school in Nottingham has banned pupils from cycling until they have successfullly completed Bikeability training.
In a letter published on the website of Ellis Guilford school, head teacher Dr Sally Coulton said that the ban had been introduced in response to “a growing number of students cycling to and from school in an extremely dangerous way.”
Examples cited in the letter included “cycling on the wrong side of the road towards oncoming traffic, cycling on the pavement, cycling in the centre of the road, carrying passengers on handlebars, performing stunts in front of cars and cycling across the A610 in front of moving traffic.”
She said that while warnings had been issued and some students had already been banned from taking their bikes to school, “there are many students who continue to ride recklessly and it is only a matter of time before we have a serious accident.”
Dr Coulton said that students who wish to cycle to school will now need to have completed a Bikeability course and to have been issued with a cycle permit.
She said: “We will require all students who want to cycle to have a helmet and a bike in good working order with lights for the darker mornings and evenings. We will secure the bike in the cycle sheds but these will not be open until 3.15pm to allow students on foot to leave the site before the cyclists.
“We can then monitor students to ensure that they are cycling safely and responsibly,” she added.
In the letter, Doctor Coulton said that the ban would take place with immediate effect.
Duncan Dollimore, head of campaigns and advocacy at Cycling UK, told road.cc: “If concerns were raised about some children behaving irresponsibly whilst cycling to school it might have been sensible to flag this up with both pupils and parents, but no, the default response has been a ‘cycle ban with immediate effect’.
"Consultation and discussion, as some parents have called for, might have given Ellis Guilford a fighting chance of maintaining the recent increase in numbers cycling to school. Imposing bans, introducing permit requirements, and making the cycling children wait behind all their mates before they can leave is not going to encourage them to carry on riding to and from school.
“Sadly, Cycling UK is hearing of more and more educational establishments seemingly content to put up barriers to those cycling to school, knowing that it will take a determined parent to challenge this when their child is threatened with disciplinary sanctions and possibly exclusion.
"Rather than looking at the bigger picture and benefits to their pupils health, many schools have decided banning things is much simpler," he added.
In recent months we have reported on several schools that have introduced restrictions on pupils who want to ride there.
Those include a school in St Albans, Hertfordshire, that made it a requirement for students to wear cycle helmets when travelling to and from the site by bike, and a school in
Simon joined road.cc as news editor in 2009 and is now the site’s community editor, acting as a link between the team producing the content and our readers. A law and languages graduate, published translator and former retail analyst, he has reported on issues as diverse as cycling-related court cases, anti-doping investigations, the latest developments in the bike industry and the sport’s biggest races. Now back in London full-time after 15 years living in Oxford and Cambridge, he loves cycling along the Thames but misses having his former riding buddy, Elodie the miniature schnauzer, in the basket in front of him.
Latest Comments
- mitsky 2 min 34 sec ago
A few years ago, at the start of winter, Lambeth council would give out 5 pairs of free small front&rear (white&red) lights to cyclists who...
- chrisonabike 10 min 51 sec ago
Why leave yourself open to the problem in the first place? No windows, no draughty windows.
- chrisonabike 12 min 40 sec ago
Yup - although as a more "distributed" / low cost kind of "good" (which the public purse pays towards) cycling will likely always be susceptible to...
- quiff 1 hour 19 min ago
I'm sure they'd ask Lime to do that too. Come and collect your bikes and my neighbour - they're in pieces.
- brooksby 1 hour 25 min ago
Ireland seems to have a lot of problems with their cycle lanes… Almost as many as England
- quiff 1 hour 45 min ago
Fair point - I was restricting myself to pedal bikes. As I've never spent that kind of money on anything though (mortgage doesn't count), it's kind...
- brooksby 2 hours 47 min ago
And finally: I wonder how many of the "more than 3,000" signatures on that petition are actually locals, who live or work there (and are not just...
- Doug_D 4 hours 23 min ago
Another book suggestion - I can highly recommend "Lost Summers and Half-Forgotten Afternoons: A Mint Sauce collection" - a beautifully presented...
- mdavidford 6 hours 14 min ago
I think you're missing an opportunity to pack even more tech into it - add accelerometers that can detect whether they're pedalling or stepping....
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41 comments
Might encourage cycling?!? Are you mad...?
We can't have that!!!
Getting the cyclists and footists to leave the school grounds by different gates would solve the issue. After all, having done their bikability no cyclist leaving the grounds will EVER use the footpath to ride their vehicle, and no footist will EVER wander randomly into the road more engrossed in their phone than checking for traffic.
I have no issue with encouraging kids to do bike proficiency testing, in fact I think ALL kids should do it. Being hazard aware at a young age, should (in theory) make for better drivers later on, when they are aware of what a close pass feels like.
she must be descended from a long line of Channel ferrymen, who keep the half dozen or so cyclists on the car and lorry deck while they all turn their engines on and drive slowly out, reversing all the cardiovascular benefits that the intrepid cyclists have previously accrued.
Allowing cyclists to leave first would be the common sense approach. This would prevent the cyclists having to dodge children on foot and also allow them to cycle on roads before the SUV children left on their long journey home to the next street. It would also encourage more children to take bikes because they could leave earlier.
However this head teacher is showing no common sense and has come up with this ill thought out idea which will only lead to less cycling children and more SUV's clogging up the streets.
Send the head teacher to the back of the class with the dunce cap.
its like advanced stop lines at the traffic lights, put the slower moving in front of the faster moving before letting everyone go.
Everyone else can chip in on the effect this will have on cycling, the health impact, the pollution and so on.
What's pissing me off is just how stupid this is. What's Dr Coulton a doctor of, I wonder?
Does she think that people ride on the wrong side of the road, perform stunts in front of cars and all the rest because they don't know which side of the road they're meant to be riding on, or that pulling wheelies in front of cars is a dick move?
It's like hoping that if we insist that everyone gets themselves a "not murdering people" proficiency badge, we'll be able to reduce the murder rate to zero.
If it was everyday safe cycling that she's worried about then maybe (maybe...) she's got a case. But no one needs a bikeability course to tell them which side of the road to ride on.
The headteacher's thesis was 'Gaining, sustaining and reclaiming: a narrative study of the lived career experience of women secondary headteachers'.; University of Nottingham 2013-2014.
More of interest is from the website of the school where the headteacher states: 'My subject specialism is Physical Education and I strongly believe in the power of teamwork and the values such as humility, industry and integrity that you gain from participating in sporting activities.'
But maybe not cycling......
Well done for digging. Doesn’t this just elicit a wry smile! The worst thing is that I had Nottingham in my head as a reasonably respectable university. What are they doing with this nonsense? Without wanting to be too conceited or anything, I reckon I could put together a “narrative study of a lived career experience” that might be marginally more informative than that of this particular Dr woman secondary headteacher, as she seems to call herself. Do I get a PhD for that?
It's a school. They should educate the pupils ...
So not really encourging kids to cycle then is it. Seems a very heavy handed response.
Whereas parents parking all over the streets, on junctions, on keep clear markings, and driving around in 1-tonne metal boxes polluting everyone's lungs - all fine.
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