Travelwise for secondary schools Secondary schools
Travelwise for secondary schools enhances knowledge and awareness of road and driver safety, active transport, and introduces students to the resources and skills they need to develop a successful Travelwise campaign for their school community.
Secondary schools programme
Get started
If you’ve created a Travelwise student group or a Students Against Dangerous Driving (SADD) group, congratulations! That means you’ve got a group of passionate, proactive people together and you’re ready to shake things up and change them for the better.
Group structure
At your first meeting, you need to decide as a group:
- Who will chair the meeting (if you don’t have a teacher in your group, nominate a leader or chairperson).
- When and how often you are going to meet.
- Where you'll meet.
- How long meetings will go on for.
- Who to notify if you can’t attend.
The chairperson is in charge of keeping discussions on track and making sure everything that needs to be, is covered in the time available.
Make the most of meetings
Meetings are a great way to get everyone together and figure out what your group is trying to achieve – and then how you’re going to do it!
try a fun brainstorming activity to draw out everyone’s ideas.
Taking note of decisions you make at your meetings can prevent you from having to discuss the same things over again. It’s also a great way to look back at the end of the year at everything you have achieved.
Sometimes people become too busy to attend your meetings. If this is happening it’s a good time to revisit the basics:
- When and how often you are going to meet.
- How long meetings will go on for.
- Who to notify if you can’t attend.
Make sure your group is always open to new members and that there are people to take over for the coming year.
Leadership
The Travelwise student leadership programme can be delivered to your group through your Community Transport Coordinator. If your group is interested, your CTC can discuss this with school management.
Get planning
- Recruit New Members: Put out a notice, collect applications or hold a Travelwise Leaders open evening to encourage your peers to get involved with Travelwise.
- Determine Your Direction: Travelwise covers a lot of information over a wide range of transportation. Do some surveys, investigations and observations of your school community and decide what you’d like to focus on for the year- remember to look at what the team did last year!
- Set some goals for what you’d like to achieve this year. Keep them manageable and measurable. You may want to use our Travelwise Action Planner (available on our website) to help you out. Use the Quick Fire Ideas in this toolkit to give you some ideas for where to start.
Make it happen
- Take Action: Put your plans into action. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from your teachers, school, parents, peers, Auckland Transport (AT), NZ Police, SADD, Attitude or other organisations and people to achieve your goals.
Next steps
- How did it go? Don’t be discouraged if you didn’t get the results you expected. Leave good notes for the team next year and they can expand on what you started.
Travelwise Whole School approach
The AT Travelwise programme delivers a Whole School approach to improving road safety and reducing congestion around schools. Safe School Travel Plans are developed and delivered by the school community working in partnership with AT, Auckland Council, New Zealand Police and other community groups and organisations.
Curriculum
A Travelwise school uses student-centred, curriculum-based strategies to enhance knowledge and awareness about road safety and active transport. You can be the one that makes a difference. Implement road safety into your classroom. Find some great resources that link with NCEA achievement standards.
Fatal Vision
Talk to your CTC about borrowing the fatal vision goggles, goggles which indicate how your vision can be affected by drinking. Run a fatal vision lesson with your class demonstrating how difficult it would be to complete basic tasks such as catching a ball while under the influence of alcohol.
Ethos & Organisation
A Travelwise school shows its commitment to road safety and active transport through its policies, school environment and culture.
Schools or student groups can put together a plan that outlines the ways students can travel in their community safely. This will provide students with safe options that are easily accessible when they are out with their friends on the weekend and they have been drinking and/or do not have a full licence to be able to drive after 10pm at night.
Students can find out the numbers of local taxi services, courtesy vans or nightrider bus timetables.
School Safe Transport Policy
Put together a school policy to inform parents/ caregivers/ teachers that when transporting students to school events the expectations are that:
- Their car is warranted and registered
- The number of passengers does not exceed the number of seatbelts
- The driver will not be under the influence of any drugs and / or alcohol, and
- The driver will obey all road rules
In return there should be an understanding that those students who travel in other adults’ cars ensure that their behaviour does not distract the driver. Parents, caregivers, teachers and students that provide transport for school events should sign this.
Parents & Community
A Travelwise school provides and reinforces consistent, culturally considerate road safety and active transport messages to their school community.
Parents can play an important role in bringing active transport messages to their child’s school community. Engage with the parents and community for your school to promote your Travelwise vision.
Parent/Student Agreement
Put together an agreement that goes home to all families. Parents and children sign it to agree that if the child rings up and needs a ride home because they have been drinking, or their driver licence restricts them from driving home, that the parent will either come and get them or pay for a taxi to bring them home no matter what time it is.
This could also be a great time to talk about the expectations of both the parents and their children. This can be sent home with every student at the beginning of the year to gain parent support of sober driving in their community.
Activities and events
Here are some ideas for activities and events your group can organise to raise awareness of road safety messages and even to raise funds so you can do more.
General ideas
Social Media
Organise a mass Facebook status and encourage other students to post it on their profiles and/or tag their friends profiles to see how many people the positive safety message can reach. Students could even make up a hash tag and get other students to retweet the sober driver message. Social media is an important resource because most young people are engaged and interact with it.
Travelwise expos
Your local community transport coordinator or Police education officer could help you organise a Travelwise expo around road safety or active transport.
Ideas in the past have been speed camera demonstrations, bike Smoothie maker, road safety quiz, slow bike races, breathalyser demos, driver distraction game and more. These expos are a great way to involve your whole school or class in road safety education. They are also great activities to have during SADD week.
Panel discussion
Gather a group of people eg; Police, St Johns, Fire or victims of car crashes. Run the meeting like a interview: have some questions prepared for the panel to get the discussion going, and once those have finished allow the audience to ask any further questions.
Your community transport coordinator can help you get in contact with panel members.
Free night club
Put together an alcohol and drug free night club in the school or community hall. Get a really good DJ and provide lots of different mocktails so students realise that they can have a fun night without alcohol or drugs.
Community trivia evening
Put together an alcohol and drug-free trivia night for the community. You can have a theme and you can ask questions about road safety and driving. This is a great way for the community to get involved and support safe and sober driving. You could either get a local celebrity to MC the night or the students could run the whole thing. It could also be a great way to do some fundraising for your committee.
AT Metro: Public transport ideas
Stand up and be counted
Figure out how many trains, buses or cars will transport all the students in your school. Promote this in assembly by having one person stand up for each train then bus followed by car.
AT HOP concession
Promote AT HOP concessions in assembly.
Shortest route
Find out the fastest route to your chosen destination without using a car.
New Network
AT is developing a new public transport network. Check it out at https://at.govt.nz/newnetwork and find the routes and stations closest to your school and home.
Trivia quiz
Host a trivia night and theme the questions around public transport or road safety.
Panel discussion
Gather a group of people that use different modes of transport and have an interview session around the use of public transport.
AT Metro Challenge
Use public transport to get to a school trip location or incorporate it into scavenger hunt or Amazing Race- a great way to see your community.
Walking and cycling ideas
#selfie competition
Promote walking and carpooling to school by running a selfie competition to show students’ journeys to school.
Bike maintenance
Run a bike maintenance day and have bikes checked for roadworthiness.
Be seen fashion
Design a high visibility cycling outfit using recycled clothing.
Bike obstacle course
Design your own course using cones and ramps to improve cycle skills.
Chalk art
Chalk art uses innovative art designs on footpaths and paths to positively engage with walkers and cyclists. Messages can focus on; Share with Care, Look before you Step, etc.
Sustainability smoothness
Hire a bike smoothie maker and make your own smoothies using sustainable transport.
Slow bike race
How slow can you cycle? Cycling slowly without touching the ground requires coordination, balance and other skills important to safe cycling. Plan your own slow bike races as a cycling promotion.
Time zone map
Get a group of friends together and walk or cycle to key locations around your school. Plot the locations of 5, 10 and 15 minutes from school on a map. This information can then be used to encourage students to walk or cycle to school.
Road safety ideas
Mocktail competition
Have a competition for students to come up with the best mocktail. The drinks can then be sold to raise funds for your group.
Balloon release
Research the number of road deaths in your area over a specific time period and arrange a day where you release a balloon for each of those people. This is a great way to draw attention to the importance of road safety and the work your group is doing.
Flash mob
Work with your group to come up with a flash mob idea to promote your road safety message. Check with your Community Transport Coordinators to see if they have giveaways you can use.
Coffin mirror
Make a coffin and put a mirror in it with a strong ‘this could be you’ type of message – as well as ways students can prevent accidents from happening – and take it around the school.
Poster competition
With a drink and drugged driving theme - these could then be distributed around the community.
Chalk bodies
Chalk outlines of people around the sports fields or courts to represent people lost in car crashes involving alcohol and/or drug impaired drivers.
Black Friday
Hold a mufti day where students wear all black. Using the roadtoll figures, send out a message about how long it would take for all those people wearing black to represent the number of people who have lost their lives on the road.
Day of the dead
Arrange for a group of students to dress in black and not to speak for the entire day. On their backs they can have a message about how they ‘died’ and what mistakes they made.
Cool campaigns for inspiration
- 2young2die is a campaign by young people and the charity Brake in the UK to end the carnage.
- Drug affected driving advertisements from NZTA.
Information for young drivers
Learn about the rules for getting your drivers licence and get information about road safety on our Young drivers page.