Greening Student Teacher Transport to schools
During the summer of 2006 a decision was made to encourage students to carry out teaching placements nearer to home addresses and to cancel the routine use of University coaches and minibuses for transport to schools. This has important environmental benefits and fits with the University’s policy of limiting the environmental impacts caused by its core activities. This has also led to a wider participation from our partnership of schools in Essex, Greater London, Hertfordshire and West and East Sussex. Students were invited to use accommodation provided in Hastings and London. Where possible, students with cars were placed so that car sharing was encouraged. Trains and buses were widely used for local and more distant journeys. More than 55% of students were placed within a ten mile radius of their chosen home addresses.
The benefits to both the environment and students have been good. Less time was spent travelling relatively short distances and opportunities to work in schools near home addresses increased their chances of obtaining teaching posts in areas of choice (e.g. Essex offered teaching posts to thirty one of our graduate teachers for September ’06).
The University has benefited tremendously from the involvement of our ‘new’ partnership schools. Our students have been good ambassadors in these schools since most have offered to host our students once more during this current academic year.
Although this arrangement has required University tutors to cover wider areas to assess and moderate our students’ progress in schools, every effort has been made to ensure that tutors work in schools as close as possible to their home areas.
This improvement in the “greenness” of our teaching placement policy relies heavily on the cooperation and good will of our students. Students have reported that they enjoy being able to walk or cycle to school placements. Students living in some areas have offered to car share to local schools; this only used to happen from Canterbury but it now occurs from Tunbridge Wells, Chatham, Ashford, Maidstone and Hastings.
Further developments need to be established to improve this evolving transport system. The costs of using public transport during the ‘rush hours’ are considerable. Currently, students have to pay large amounts of money on train fares at peak travel times. Perhaps it could be arranged that students on school placements use their rail card for reduced fares? Perhaps local bus companies would allow students travelling to school placements to obtain the £50 annual unlimited travel tickets that are available to local secondary school pupils?