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Every child in England could get cycle training if Government doubled £13m fundingBikeability training (copyright Britishcycling.org.uk)

Every child in England could get cycle training if Government doubled £13m funding

“Investing just £18 in each Year 6 student would give every young person the opportunity to develop a lifelong skill that would be good for their health, and also the environment”
by Alex Bowden
Sat, Oct 12, 2019 15:28
6

Cycling UK has called on the Government to double its funding of the Bikeability  cycle training scheme. The charity says that just £26m of funding would mean every 10-year-old in the country would get the opportunity to learn to cycle.

Cycling UK says it costs £18.33 per head for a pupil to reach Bikeability Level 2, which equips pupils with the skills to negotiate quiet single carriage roads and simple junctions.

Bikeability funding was recently increased from £12.5m for 2018/19 to £13m for 2019/20. However, this still means that only 50 per cent of English primary schools can access the training.

Further funding would be required to deliver Bikeability Level 3, which provides the skills to ride safely on busier roads and at roundabouts.

More than half of parents agree cycle training should be added to National Curriculum

James Scott, Cycling UK’s Director of Behaviour Change said: “Bikeability is a great scheme, helping thousands of children to learn to cycle with confidence, but with austerity meant to be officially over, now would have been the time to turn on the funding taps so every child in England can learn how to cycle, not just 50% of them.

“Investing just £18 in each Year 6 student would give every young person the opportunity to develop a lifelong skill that would be good for their health, and also the environment.”

In its ‘Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy: Safety Review’, the Government expressed an ambition to create, “a world in which a 12 year old can cycle, and walk, safely.”

Cycling UK says making Bikeability available to all Year 6 students is an important step to achieving the Government’s vision.

Currently, only three percent of 11-16 year olds regularly cycle to school.

Separately, the Government recently admitted that funding per head in England will have to double if it is to reach its 2025 target of doubling cycling from 800 million travel ‘stages’ to 1.6 billion.

Responding to a Transport Select Committee report on its Cycling and Walking Investment strategy, the Department for Transport said: “Interim results from the investment models indicate that annual investment per head in England is likely to need to at least double if the cycling aim is to be achieved in 2025.”

Bikeability
cycling uk
Alex Bowden

Alex has written for more cricket publications than the rest of the road.cc team combined. Despite the apparent evidence of this picture, he doesn't especially like cake.

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6 comments

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Pilot Pete | 5 years ago
0 likes

In my opinion Bikeability is a complete waste of money. Teaching kids how to ride on the roads only for them NEVER to go on the roads because they are just too dangerous is a waste of time. 

I live in a small market town and you simply NEVER see kids riding on the roads, they stick to the pavements, quite understandably.

There are too many motorised vehicles, all vying for position, breaking speed limits, nipping through amber and red lights, blocking junctions, driving on the pavement (I kid you not, there is a single carriageway main road that opens up into two lanes at a junction. Those wanting to go straight on need to take the right hand lane and end up queueing to do so - numerous vehicles wanting to turn left routinely mount the kerb and do 10yds along the pavement to get past. The grass verge is being churned up into a quagmire). It is no wonder few adults cycle on these roads let alone children.

The money would be better spent improving the infrastructure and providing safe cycling and walking routes first, training should follow, but only after the infrastructure is in place.

PP

Avatar
Pyro Tim | 5 years ago
1 like

I get that under 10s shouldn't be on the roads, but waiting until they are 10 for any cycle training is a wasted opportunity. Get them riding younger. In parks and tracks. Teach them in the playground so they are introduced to a fun exercise in reception class. My boy rides, but so many in his class can't.

Avatar
RoubaixCube | 5 years ago
2 likes

Maybe part of that 13mil should be given to the police so they can get the resources to do their job and POLICE stuff before adding more cannon fodder to the road and not being able to investigate when there are inevitable more deaths....

 

The standard of driving on UK roads have never been so poor. Give Mr Plod the money to get people back in line and put in better cycling infrastructure before getting younger people to cycle and 'run the gauntlet'

Would you want your kids to be put in harms way by cycling on the road where drivers are so wreckless? There have been drivers that even knock kids off bikes and assault them before driving off - This is not how i wish for my kids to grow up.

 

Avatar
ConcordeCX replied to RoubaixCube | 5 years ago
2 likes

RoubaixCube wrote:

Maybe part of that 13mil should be given to the police so they can get the resources to do their job and POLICE stuff before adding more cannon fodder to the road and not being able to investigate when there are inevitable more deaths....

 

The standard of driving on UK roads have never been so poor. Give Mr Plod the money to get people back in line and put in better cycling infrastructure before getting younger people to cycle and 'run the gauntlet'

Would you want your kids to be put in harms way by cycling on the road where drivers are so wreckless? There have been drivers that even knock kids off bikes and assault them before driving off - This is not how i wish for my kids to grow up.

 

or perhaps take the money, and more of it, out of the road transport subsidy instead.

 

Avatar
burtthebike | 5 years ago
2 likes

Why on earth would the government want to increase the numbers of those pestilential cyclists?  That would reduce congestion, pollution, climate change, improve health, reduce obesity, cut the number of killed and injured on the roads; what rational government would want that?

This should be top of their agenda, but year after year after year, they give cycling a tiny amount of money and tell us to be grateful, while they spend all our taxes on making it easier to drive.  I'm seriously considering joining XR's cycling shock troop battalion; if there isn't one, let's start it.

Edit; There is one https://www.facebook.com/kim.plausible/videos/10157714443534923/?t=40

Avatar
Spangly Shiny | 5 years ago
3 likes

I think that the gist of this article sould be amended to every 10 year old who has a bike. I remember all my wealthier class mates doing cycling proficiency lessons while I watched on enviously for I had no bike of my own, yet probably cycled more than any of them.  All my cycling was done on the back of a tandem up to my 14th birthday when I got a (second hand) curly Hetchins.

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