As part of BRAKE National Road Safety Week, year 5 pupils who have been chosen as Junior Travel Ambassadors are promoting road safety messages to their school communities.
This year there are just under 200 Junior Travel Ambassadors (JTA) working in schools across the county.
The scheme, organised by Cambridgeshire County Council’s Road Safety team, aims to give pupils a voice and empowers them to make their own decisions about what they think needs to change in order to improve road safety for their school.
A JTA is also responsible for promoting safer, active travel, walking, cycling, scooting and encouraging those who have to travel to school by car to park away from the school gate and walk.
As ambassadors within their school community, they also promote independent travel to their peers as they prepare for the transition from primary to secondary school.
Junior Travel Ambassadors at Robert Arkenstall primary school in Haddenham have already started promoting road safety. They are involved in the planning of a whole village road safety campaign which will begin in the near future.
The theme of this year’s road safety week is, ‘we all have a responsibility to care and look out for each other when we are near the roads’. Junior travel Ambassadors will be doing school assemblies, writing in the parent/carer newsletters and running fun road safety competitions
In Cambridgeshire we have been running Junior Travel Ambassadors in primary schools across the county for the past 6 years and it has proved to be very popular and very successful at getting important road safety messages out as well as increasing active and safe travel.
Following conversations with Kent County Council who have been running a very successful online Youth Travel Ambassador (YTA) programme. Cambridgeshire have been given permission to use their tried and tested resource in our secondary schools.
As well as important life skills, following the programme with all the information and resources it provides, the YTA’s will also have access to competition/survey response prizes such as amazon vouchers and at the end of the seven sessions be able to pitch for funding to run their campaign.
Cllr Alex Beckett, chair of the Highways and Transport Committee at Cambridgeshire County Council, said: “We are always keen to get involved in schemes that help school children to become more aware of road safety and encourages them to participate in active travel.
“The JTA and YTA scheme gives pupils the opportunity to give honest, helpful feedback about their daily journey to and from school. We want to greater understand the issues they face and help them to become more independent, as well as developing a much greater understanding and appreciation of the environment around them.
“It is great to see so many schools getting behind the scheme and encouraging pupils to get involved in activities that help them learn more about road safety and active travel.”
For more information, please visit our JTA page or if you are a school that would like to find out more about Junior or Youth Travel Ambassadors email: maree.richards@cambridgeshire.gov.uk
For more information about National Road Safety Week, visit https://www.brake.org.uk/road-safety-week
