National STARS School Travel Awards 2021/22: North East and Yorkshire & The Humber Regions Winners Announced

We’re delighted to announce that Tweedmouth Community Middle School (Northumberland), St Augustine’s Roman Catholic School (North Yorkshire), Allendale Primary School (Northumberland), and Phillimore Community Primary School (Sheffield) have been named as the STARS North East and Yorkshire & The Humber Schools of the Region for 2021/22.

Tweedmouth Community Middle School, Northumberland County Council, STARS North East Secondary School of the Region 2021/22

Tweedmouth Middle School are committed to delivering a programme of initiatives and embedding these into the school year and curriculum including Bikeability, scooter training, walk to school weeks, Bike Week and the Big Pedal. Tweedmouth Middle School’s aim is to promote active travel to encourage pupils to get fit, healthy and show why this is so important to help reduce car use and pollution near their school to create a safer, healthier environment, but also for their pupils to enjoy the experiences and have fun!

St Augustine’s Roman Catholic School, Scarborough, North Yorkshire County Council, STARS Yorkshire & The Humber Secondary School of the Region 2021/22

St Augustine’s School have been recognised because of the amount of hard work and dedication from school staff and pupils to drive Sustainable Travel to the forefront of their school and whole community, resulting in more people using Active Travels modes. Seeing the percentage of people using Active Travel modes increase, in both walking and cycling, will have an immediate effect on people’s health and mental health, whilst also helping to improve the environment by reducing greenhouse gases. Another benefit for the school and community, is that is has reduced congestion on the roads around school, which in turn has improved the road safety aspect.

Allendale Primary School, Northumberland County Council, STARS North East Primary School of the Region 2021/22

As part of their School Travel Plan, Allendale have always promoted active travel, especially walking or park and stride. This year the school have shifted focus and have promoted cycling and scooting, as well as walking to school. For 2 years they have been lobbying the Local Council to improve the traffic congestion and speeding outside school, especially parking at the start and finish of the school day. They have now been successful in having traffic calming measures of speed humps, 20 MPH Zone, road markings and parking restriction signs installed and in operation outside school. This has made a difference to the start and end of the day and made the area immediately outside the school gates less congested and traffic more visible to road users and pedestrians. Their local school transport provider enabled pupils in receipt of school transport to bring their bikes/ scooters on the minibuses and staff helped pupils to unload these – pupils then rode from the bus park into school! The children’s confidence and road sense has greatly improved due to this training and practice.

Phillimore Community Primary School , Sheffield City Council, STARS Yorkshire & The Humber Primary School of the Region 2021/22

Phillimore provides a safe, pleasant and healthy environment for their school community. Active travel compliments and links with the wider aims and ethos of the school in terms of tackling childhood obesity and levels of inactivity amongst pupils and families. The school is situated in an area of high deprivation and they know that some forms of green mode travel, such as biking and scootering may not be easily available due to cost. They have therefore focussed on promoting the benefits of walking, not only as an important way to travel, but also as fun, healthy and family based which can be done outside of school. They run a wide range of activities, such as creating a Park and Stride point from the local park, a Y3 walking programme and supporting the Beat the Street campaign. The school have held active travel breakfasts and set up local walks from the nearby Olympic Legacy Park. These interventions and activities have helped see levels of walking journeys to school increase year on year from 56% to 65% while car journeys have reduced from 39% to 23%.

Here’s a full list of the North East and Yorkshire & The Humber Region awards winners:

STARS Local Authority Secondary Schools of the Year 2021/22

Northumberland County Council
- Tweedmouth Community Middle School
East Riding of Yorkshire Council
- Longcroft School and Sixth Form College
North Yorkshire County Council
- St Augustine’s Roman Catholic School, Scarborough