Do you have a car drive through drop off at Primary School? How does pick up work?

whitewing

Lift sharing could be a problem for an alphabetical system.

Poppie68

The local primary school had and still does have a large car park round the back accessed through one of two main gates...all drop offs and pick ups were conducted their without incident.... then someone declared it was not safe for the parents and children walking in....no idea what they the thought the railings and pedestrian crossing was for and they shut the car park down.....now all parents have to manoeuvre the car and then walk their children in ...across a very busy main road....which is also a main route into the local town....the school grounds house a nursery, primary and secondary school... absolute madness....
Anyway sorry but down to the point of my post....a friend has told me the parents are going to petition for a park and ride system....after it came out an 11 year old suffered serious head injuries after being hit by a car right outside trying to get to his mums car...
No idea if it will work but anything is better than the diabolical non system now.

GobbledyGook

The school my girls go to has this. It's more successful at drop off than it is at pick up.

In the morning there are two drop off zones. Each have 2 school staff (so it will depend if you have staff or volunteers available - our teachers, PTA and some parents do it on a rota). You drive into the driveway and there is a layby/coned area on each side with space for around 10 cars each. The children line up with the staff and every so often a gap is made so that the kids from the opposite side can cross and the two groups can be taken inside.

At pick up there are 4 sections and children are allocated a specific section so that people know which place to stop in. Again they are manned by staff/PTA/volunteers who stand with the children until they are collected.

It can be a pain if one class is running late as it leaves some parents waiting which clogs up pick up zones.

It works here as there are two gates so people can drive in, pick up, drive around and out the other gate. The layout also means the pick up groups can be kept a bit apart leaving lots of space for pulling in/out. I don't know how it would work without a lot of space.

It was a lot of work to start up because someone has to sit and work out which children need to be in the same pick up zone and then split all the children so that there is a roughly equal number using each area. I don't know how successful it would be in a massive school either.

Counting_Pennies_2

GobbledyGook wrote: »

The school my girls go to has this. It's more successful at drop off than it is at pick up.

In the morning there are two drop off zones. Each have 2 school staff (so it will depend if you have staff or volunteers available - our teachers, PTA and some parents do it on a rota). You drive into the driveway and there is a layby/coned area on each side with space for around 10 cars each. The children line up with the staff and every so often a gap is made so that the kids from the opposite side can cross and the two groups can be taken inside.

At pick up there are 4 sections and children are allocated a specific section so that people know which place to stop in. Again they are manned by staff/PTA/volunteers who stand with the children until they are collected.

It can be a pain if one class is running late as it leaves some parents waiting which clogs up pick up zones.

It works here as there are two gates so people can drive in, pick up, drive around and out the other gate. The layout also means the pick up groups can be kept a bit apart leaving lots of space for pulling in/out. I don't know how it would work without a lot of space.

It was a lot of work to start up because someone has to sit and work out which children need to be in the same pick up zone and then split all the children so that there is a roughly equal number using each area. I don't know how successful it would be in a massive school either.

That is incredibly useful thank you. How does it work for children being picked up on foot do the parents go to a different zone or do they just walk up to the volunteer at the specific zone?

Would one of your organisers be happy to talk to me via email regarding this? If so would you mind sending me with a pm? Thanks

Thanks

dizziblonde

One I've seen work relatively OK short term was when one of our local schools was completely closed for a major refurbishment and they'd temporarily moved into the vacated infant school part of a recently merged infant and junior school (hopefully you can follow that). Was about 1/4 mile or so away from the normal school site and with less good parking than the school normally had so they had a walking bus set up from the usual school carpark around to the temporary school site and parents would drop off there where there was more space and less chaos. Think it ran for about a term and a half until the school was completely refurbished and moved back into its usual premises.

Other one I've seen which doesn't actually cause chaos is another local school right next door to a big supermarket who actually have a gate (locked during school hours and only open specific times of day) from the supermarket car park through into school grounds. That one works really well - the school gets the parking from the supermarket in one of those quieter corners that aren't generally busy during off-peak times and the supermarket gets all the "just pop in for a bottle of milk and come out £50 poorer" passing trade at school run times.

There should be someone within your local council who has the job of working with schools to produce action plans for this sort of thing though (I forget the exact terminology it's a long time since I had the head of the PTA's kid in my class whose mum was heavily involved in doing this sort of thing).

GobbledyGook

Counting_Pennies wrote: »

That is incredibly useful thank you. How does it work for children being picked up on foot do the parents go to a different zone or do they just walk up to the volunteer at the specific zone?

Would one of your organisers be happy to talk to me via email regarding this? If so would you mind sending me with a pm? Thanks

Thanks

The children being collected on foot, and those walking home alone, are collected from the playground through the pedestrian gate. Parents are asked to specify at the start of term the normal route the child will be collected and to let the school know when this is changed.

One thing we do have now which is new is one zone is for the children who are collected by a childminder or nanny. It's easier to change a child from their zone into the childminder zone than it is to try and co-ordinate a childminder collecting from 2 or 3 different areas.

The two who done the bulk of the work are no longer around as their kids have moved on. I'm now the one who sorts out where the new kids go as part of my PTA role so I can try and answer any questions or I can ask the Deputy Head as she's heavily involved if that's any use to you?

cr1mson

We did a bit of research at our school and it was ruled out as school far too big. The police were concerned about tailbacks making it difficult for emergency vehicles to pass.

This is a problem that dogs a lot of schools and don't think anyone has come up with a good solution.

These things have helped

Council painted lines over driveways so it was more obvious where could park and couldn't. As I understand it these are not strictly legally enforceable but they do help.

Traffic warden coming out every so often.

Playground being supervised 20 minutes before bell to allow staggered drop off. There was plans to have playground supervised for 15 minutes after bell but no funding so that people could stagger pick up.

What we wanted to do but told couldn't was photograph examples of bad parking and put them on internet.

We also wanted to create a reward scheme for those who walked even if it was from local car park but again told no. However we have been allowed to do it in walk to school weeks to encourage people to try it. Some of the pupils have to drive in and during these weeks we ask people to park away from school and then walk for the last bit.

maman

I'm sure you're doing this for all the right reasons CP but am I the only one who is saddened by the fact that parents just won't walk a few hundred yards, want to drop their children off like dry cleaning and expect school staff to get involved in managing this sort of facility when time would be far better spent on teaching and learning.


Our local school just had a big purge on stopping parents bringing cars anywhere near the school. So not park and ride but park and walk. Police helped at the start, trees were planted on verges to stop parking there, in the end it became 'shameful' to bring the car outside the school. It was surprising how many parents found they didn't really need to drive at all.


I wouldn't get involved, it's working with parents gone mad IMO. Next thing you'll be organising a scheme were teachers can come around to homes and collect children!;)

onlyroz

I can see how a car drop-off could work very well but I don't think a car collection point would work - because kids at our school have to be handed over to a recognised adult, classes run late, siblings leave at different times etc etc. They already have KS1 leaving 5 minutes before KS2 (in theory) but it doesn't really make much difference.

As for trying to encourage parents to walk, if you have to dash off to work immediately after the school run then this can be very difficult. If I walked the kids to school it would put me about 20 minutes further behind schedule.