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Walk to School at Marshfield Primary School


Police officers have teamed up with Marshfield Primary School to support national Walk to School Week.

The Walk to School Campaign is run by the charity Living Streets with funding from Department for Transport and the BIG Lottery fund. It asks parents, pupils and teachers to think about their journey to and from school and the many benefits of making it on foot.

Marshfield’s neighbourhood officers, Pc Adrian Walters and PCSO Kim Weare, have agreed to accompany a ‘walking bus’ of around 70 children to school. As well as keeping the children safe as they walk, the officers hope to raise awareness of the dangers drivers can pose. Marshfield residents have set speeding as one of the neighbourhood policing team’s priorities and Marshfield Primary continually warn parents not to park inappropriately when picking up their children.

Pc Adrian Walters, neighbourhood officer for Marshfield, said:
“Although the aim of the walk is to help the environment, we are also hoping to highlight the problems that schools face with illegal parking and irresponsible driving.

Motorists need to realise that driving and parking irresponsibly can put schoolchildren in danger.

Crossing roads and stepping between parked cars are hazards that children walking to and from school should not have to face."

Year One teacher at Marshfield Primary School Bekki Brustad, who organised the walking bus, said:
“As well as encouraging our children to walk to school for environmental purposes, we also hope that by having fewer cars around the school the children will be safer.

We are running a competition throughout the school to reward the class that has the most children walking to school.

Where it’s not possible for children to walk from home, we are asking parents to lift-share and drop children off in Castleton to join the walking bus.

Many parents who haven’t walked before have said how much they enjoyed the experience this week."

Taken from the Heddlu Gwent Police Website