In 2002, the Scottish School Travel Advisory Group ( SSTAG) recommended that school travel co-ordinators ( STCs) should be set up within each local authority, and in February 2003 national funding of the School Travel Co-ordinator Initiative was announced. With co-ordinators now delivering a range of initiatives across Scotland, and funding committed to continue this role until 2007/08, this review considers the lessons learned to date and seeks to highlight best practice to ensure that the committed funding can deliver maximum benefits in the coming years. The review included: a policy review; questionnaire, telephone, and face to face surveys with nearly 200 people across Scotland; and case studies in six selected areas. Main findings are: * The School Travel Co-ordinator ( STC) initiative has increased staff resources for activities that are generally under-resourced by local authorities across Scotland including publicity, joint working with schools and communities and integration of activities across disciplines and between transport functions. * STCs are currently working with 265 secondary schools and over 1700 primary schools across Scotland. However most schools are at a relatively early stage, with only 15 secondary schools and 179 primary schools having implemented travel plans. * The general lack of training and support for the STC initiative in its first year was a problem. Although early progress was therefore patchy, overall STCs have helped to support culture change, inject new ideas and build joint approaches in school travel. * It is difficult to separate the impacts of the STC from the much greater complementary impacts of partners such as Road Safety Officers, Active School Co-ordinators and others, but awareness of the STC role and its aims is generally high amongst partner professions. * Successful areas of delivery are: assistance with school travel assessments, advice on possible measures for schools, fund assembly and administration of funds to schools, negotiating compromises between different sectors, developing materials and other resources, facilitating changes to school transport provision, negotiating with planners of new schools, developing targets, co-ordinating partners to improve behaviour on school buses and arranging networking and awareness raising events. * To deliver on such a wide ranging and challenging agenda there are many different skills needed, and the STC initiative has been successful in attracting people with a wide range of skills into a transport planning role. However, the absence of a background in transport means that training has been essential for STCs to undertake their role effectively. * In some councils there could be advantages if the wide ranging STC roles were incorporated into parts of the job descriptions of more staff within the council, rather than being resourced through a single post. To date some of the best delivery has been by STCs who split their time between the STC role and other functions. * There are significant benefits if relevant information from school travel plans is communicated to school transport managers to inform decisions on allocations of transport, and to ensure consistency with school travel plans. * Joint working with partners in so many sectors can be very time consuming, and the most effective STCs emphasised the importance of a clear delivery focus to avoid getting bogged down. A particularly effective approach for joint working and delivery appears to be using STC staff time for fund assembly to ensure that incentives for joint action and delivery are created through the availability of resources controlled by the STC. (Author/publisher)
Abstract