Catching the bus to walk to school

Feb 23, 2012, 3:06 GMT

Sydney - Every single day of her years in a Brisbane primary school, Lynda Hobden got there and back on her own two feet - and never thought anything of it.

Now, under a walk-to-school initiative in Sydney that she manages for a non-profit group, pupils are feted as heroes, even given stickers they can swap for ice cream, for making the journey on foot rather than in a car. 'We live in different times,' Hobden said. 'If we lived in Brisbane, my children might walk to school.'

A study at Melbourne's Deakin University found that fewer than 15 per cent of children who live within 15 minutes or less of their school actually walk to school. Surprisingly, three-quarters said they would like to walk to school.

Parents maintain it is too risky, that the streets are not safe either because of the traffic or the threat of assault from a stranger. Crime statistics show this not to be the case. Researchers also find these fears unfounded.

'I think parents are doing a good job of scaring the daylights out of their kids,' said Melbourne sociologist Catherine Underwood, who studied these perceptions of danger for the Australian Council for Educational Research. Only 40 per cent thought it safe to let primary-age children walk to school on their own.

In the Walking Bus initiative that Hobden runs, parents volunteer to escort groups of children to and from school. Corporate sponsorship pays the costs, including for goodies like fluorescent vests and stickers.

'One thing I'm looking at is to have companies earn carbon credits for sponsoring the Walking Bus,' Hobden said. 'Walking to school rather than coming by car saves on emissions.'

It is estimated that ferrying children to and from school makes up 20 per cent of peak hour traffic in Australian cities. Over half of all journeys are less than a 3 kilometre round trip.

The Walking Bus idea has gone round the world. There is a Walk to School Day that has pupils in 33 countries involved. In Britain, to the alarm of some environmentalists, one of the leading sponsors of the initiative is South Korean car company Kia Motors.

You would think that parents would jump at the chance of being involved in an initiative that would both save money and improve the fitness of their children. Not so. In one Sydney primary school with 750 pupils, Hobden could drum up only seven volunteers to staff Walking Bus services.

She said that with both parents working in most households, it was considered easier and quicker to drop kids off and pick them up. Most schools have day-care facilities, some offering hours of supervision at either end of the school day.

Cassandra Wilkinson, a writer on social matters, bemoans the paranoia that keeps children in cars and out of public places. She worries it will have serious social consequences. 'The great resilience-building Australian childhood is available to fewer and fewer of our kids,' she wrote in a blog. 'Whether they are afraid of child molesters or cars or broken bones, most of their fears are unfounded.'

Wilkinson argues that government must share the blame for an 'absurd over-protectiveness of our children.' An example: What used to be Walk to School Day is now Walk Safely to School Day.

And adults who defy the helicopter-parents syndrome can come unstuck. A father who would only identify himself as Luke confided to a Sydney radio station that his 7-year-old son, who had been sent on an errand to the corner shop, came home in the back of a police car. The officers warned Luke that child protection officers would be informed the next time his boy was spotted out alone.