DfE Estab. No:

Dear Headteacher

Proximity & Pupil Choice ("Doorstep Leakages") Map & the STHC Dorset Web Portal

Since 2007-08 the School Travel Health Check (STHC)™ has been supporting schools in  by enabling them to visualise and quantify how pupils travel to their school, how far they travel, and where they travel from. This allows schools to see how they are doing in encouraging pupils to walk and cycle to school where possible. This benefits your school through:-

• supporting a reduction in cars and congestion in the local area
• a safer road environment at the school gates
• enabling pupils to incorporate active, healthy travel into their daily routine
• maintaining good relations with neighbours by managing parking / drop-off and
• reducing the schools travel emissions of carbon and supporting eco-school status

The good news is that this appears to be working. Schools are able to encourage pupils who live locally to walk and cycle instead of being driven. Our data suggests that the distance which pupils will walk and cycle is being gently stretched. Of course this is only part of the story. The STHC process shows that by undertaking basic spatial analysis and visualising & quantifying the results with maps & charts, some of the less obvious underlying issues are brought in to focus. But the analysis can also answer questions such as:-

• Is a given pupil attending the nearest school they could go to (given their national curriculum year group)?
• If not, what is their nearest school and how much "extra" distance are they travelling in going elsewhere?

With this data we can test commonly held assumptions such as "most children attend their local school", or "many children that live within a realistic walking distance of school are still driven because parents are too busy / lazy to do otherwise". Well your STHC Pupil Travel Distance & Mode Analysis Report answered those - in  as a whole, 52% of pupils are attending their nearest school, 41% of pupils live within a realistic Walk Threshold (800m (0.5 miles) for Primary, 2km (1.2 miles) for Secondary) of their school, but only 5.5% of pupils are driven to school from within walk threshold. Here's a reminder of how compared:-

We have recently expanded our analysis to delve deeper into the whole issue of the proximity of schools to pupils, pupils to schools, and schools to each other to see what other useful, new insights we could gain. One of the results of this work is this “Doorstep Leakages" pack. The enclosed map quantifies and visualises the:-

• pupils living within the walk threshold of your school but attending ("leaking away" to) schools elsewhere.
• gains that could come if pupils attended their nearest school.

This is further expanded upon in the new "Proximity & Pupil Choice" area of the STHC Dorset Web Portal (www.sthc.co.uk/portals/dorset), which was launched last October. There you can find:-

• an interactive version of the "leakage map" that enables users to quantify and visualise selected pupils in various key scenarios.
• "All-Schools" data and the Authority-level overview.
• some of the latest research & ideas on the parental decision making process and how schools can better engage with it.

Note: Most of the contents of the Web Portal are available to all users, however given the potentially sensitive nature of the "Pupil Leakage" data, we require users to login to view it. Your User Name and password remain the same as those provided in the Standard STHC School Pack posted out to your school in October 2014. A reminder is included here on a separate sheet, or can be obtained by contacting the email address below.

These tools impartially show the current situation at your school and highlight the transport consequences (an additional 20% congestion in the “school run” peak hour) and potential for change. In a time where schools are taking on increasing autonomy over their affairs and within an environment of reducing budgets, our role has become one of holding up mirrors to reflect the reality (rather than the myths) surrounding active travel to school – it is up to schools themselves to examine the facts and work to deliver against parents and pupils expectations.

Questions For Debate: The main purpose of the STHC is to provide schools with the necessary facts to support an informed debate about the issues around how pupils travel to it. Here are a few questions to start you thinking about the implications of the 'Leakage map' for your school:-

• Are there significant numbers of potential pupils leaking away from your own doorstep? If so why do you think this is? Does it lessen the issue if the majority of those leaking away to other schools walk to them?
• As many decisions on choice of school are based on word of mouth, do you actively seek out how your school is perceived Locally?
• Given that going to the nearest school is no longer the default position, how do you present your school to your local community?

What to do now? We know that to see large numbers of pupils leaking away from your doorstep is disheartening. The ‘do nothing‘ option will only make matters worse, so use this pack as an opportunity to engage with, and stimulate action from, your whole school community, including taking a view from beyond the school gate looking back in. Given that choice of schools is driven as much (if not more) by word of mouth than detailed analysis of OfSTED reports, you have ample opportunity to assess how you are perceived by parents on your doorstep and then deliver what they really want – "A good school locally".

Want it done differently? We want the STHC to be of as much interest and use to you as possible – all ideas on how to improve this "Pupil Leakage" pack and our support for the future are welcomed!

Kind regards,
                     The Dorset School Travel Planning Team
                     dorset@sthc.co.uk

PS - If some of your figures / maps don’t look right: Your STHC relies on the data you and other Dorset schools collect being accurate and your Authority having the correct coordinates for your school. Please check the STHC school maps for rogue postcodes / modes of travel and have any errors corrected in time for next January’s Census / Pupil Usual Mode of Travel data return.
Split-Site Schools: - If your school shares a common DfE number with other sites the STHC output will not reflect the true travel patterns of all your pupils.