Powering Positive Change – Supporting Sustainable Transport Goals through WOW: TRANSPORT Smart Class, London & South England 2025 Retrospective

Joanne Page and Zoë Lynch are Project Coordinators working in Essex for Living Streets, the innovative UK charity for everyday walking.

In their joint presentation and roundtable sessions at TRANSPORT Smart Class, London & South East England 2025, they demonstrated how engagement and digital technology are helping to deliver behaviour change and climate action in Essex.

Working with local authority and transport partners, WOW – Living Streets’ walk to school challenge, with the award-winning interactive Travel Tracker – is making a positive impact with communities across the county to help achieve modal shift from cars to active journeys.

Presentation highlights and notes:

• Living Streets has delivered the Walk To School Outreach (WTSO) programme with schools in Essex since 2020 and also have supported targeted engagement to support 20mph, school streets, and park and stride sites; Organisationally, they also support the Essex Climate Commission transport working group;
• Living Streets are helping thousands of children take their first steps to being active through their walk to school programme; As a national charity their work in schools covers England, Scotland and Wales, and with pre-school children all the way through to university;
• Jo and Zoë’s work in Essex is part of The Walk To School Outreach (WTSO) project and is funded through a grant from Active Travel England and delivered by Living Streets in partnership with 33 combined authority, local authority and county council partners; This is year two of a two-year funding agreement for WTSO which began in April 2023;
• The project’s aim is to overcome barriers to walking and help the Government reach its target of 55% of primary school aged children walking to school by 2025; The project also supports increases in physical activity and reductions in congestion in some of the most deprived communities in England, with over one fifth of partner schools in areas in the lowest Indices Multiple Deprivation (IMD) decile;
• National Data – Active school locations map of England: January – March 2025;
• Why do we need to enable more children to walk to school?
• Unnecessary short car journeys are presenting us with a serious challenge, and our young people are paying the price whilst we try to solve it; Toxic air pollution is responsible for up to 15% of new childhood asthma cases and pedestrians account for a quarter of people killed and seriously injured on our roads, with children disproportionately affected; At the same time, over half (55%) of 5-16 year olds don’t meet the Chief Medical Officers’ recommended 60 minutes of physical activity a day;
• Our streets need to be safe and welcoming for people of all ages, but we particularly need to inspire our younger generations to want to walk and instil healthy habits that will take them through life;
• So, how do we do that?

• One of the ways Living Streets support children to walk more is by working with schools and local authorities to encourage behaviour change, running WOW – their walk to school challenge…
• WOW is a pupil-led initiative where children self-report how they get to school every day using the interactive WOW Travel Tracker; If they travel sustainably (walk/wheel, cycle or scoot) once a week for a month, they get rewarded with a badge;
• It’s simple to run and children love taking part; Each year, the collectable WOW badges are designed by pupils in the annual badge design competition; Every year, WOW and its badges follow a different, fun and educational theme – this year’s theme, ‘Walk with imagination’ invites pupils to stretch their creativity, asking them to imagine a different walk to school: “we want to inspire pupils to dream big while learning and embracing the many wonders of walking to school. And in the new school year, we will be encouraging pupils to ‘Walk With Joy’”;
• By walking to school, Living Streets are helping children get those 60 active minutes adding up; At the same time, it gets parents and carers moving more, too; The schools report that children arrive feeling more refreshed and ready to concentrate;
• Living Streets know from their work in schools that parents are put off walking their children to school because of speeding vehicles, cars parked on the pavements and pollution concerns; Their work tackles these barriers by reducing the number of cars at the school gates – With fewer cars, we reduce the pollution that lingers long after the last car has left, and help families feel safer and more confident about walking to school;
• WOW schools see an average 59% decrease in car journeys to the school gates and 18% more walking and wheeling journeys; When you factor in cycling, scooting and Park and Stride, that increase jumps further, with 43% more active journeys;
• As well as helping to create healthy habits and increasing walking rates, there are other perks to taking part in WOW…
• Accreditation – Helps schools achieve their outstanding OFSTED schools rating and Modeshift STARS and Healthy Schools status;
• Climate – Walking to school with Living Streets can form part of a school’s Climate Action Plan; A CAP is a detailed plan to enable your education setting to progress or commence sustainability initiatives and should typically cover four areas to align with DfE’s sustainability and climate change strategy, including decarbonisation;
• Adaptable – Living Streets understand that walking to school isn’t an option for everyone and so aim to adapt WOW in these situations, so that all pupils have a chance to be awarded a WOW badge; Living Streets’ schools team can work with school staff, including SENCO, to establish a bespoke approach to WOW that works for them and their school community’s needs;

• Walk To School Outreach 24-25…
• Living Streets’ Travel Tracker data allows them to monitor the impact of the work they do, and the data is available for schools and local
  authorities, for them to see the impact of WOW and of other interventions – including Bikeability and School Streets;
• Walk to School Outreach created an 8 percentage point modal shift to walking and wheeling all the way, and a 23 percentage point shift to active travel including scooting, skating, cycling and park-and-stride; That’s a lot of new walking journeys (17.8 million) and car km (3.4 million) removed from the roads at peak times;
• It is evidence that dedicated behaviour change programmes can increase and sustain walking rates, leading to considerable transport, environmental and health benefits; But the impact that often really matters is from schools and families – sharing the difference that it means to them;
• Alongside their behaviour change programme, Living Streets also offer more in-depth support to make places better for walking…
• As part of the Walk to School Outreach programme, they help schools to set-up and launch WOW with continued support throughout the year; To make life easier for school staff, pupil WOW Ambassadors are elected in the school and receive their own special training to equip them with the skills to help lead on the challenge in their school;
• WOW Top Ten, leaderboard challenges are run each term to encourage inter-school competition to increase active travel; Throughout the year, visits from Living Streets’ team and mascot Strider help keep momentum going;
• Project Stories: In-Person Launch Assemblies – The Spring term was a busy time for in-person launch assemblies (9 x assemblies at Ashingdon, Elmwood, Upshire, Jotmans Hall, Kelvedon Hatch, Galleywood, Hadleigh, Moulsham and Thomas Willingale primary schools), WOW Ambassador training (4 x in-person sessions) and Travel Tracker set-up sessions (5 x);
• Essex Overview – 52 Active Schools (30 new + 22 continuing), 14.36K Pupils logging journeys, 481.65K Journeys logged; Modal Shift (April-July 2024) – Active Travel Total increased from 61.69% to 86.14% (24.81% points Change), Walking/wheeling all the way increased from 44.42% to 48.38% (4.98%), Park & Stride increased from 8.64% to 30.14% (20.72%), Car all the way decreased from 36.46% to 12.81% (-24.04%);
• Project Stories: WOW Badge Design Competition 2025 – After receiving more than 180,000 entries from 602 schools across the UK, the winning badge designs were selected for next year’s eleven badges; Saw another winning entry from an Essex school – a ‘camping’ badge as part of the new ‘Joy of Walking’ theme!
• WOW Top Ten South England 2025 – The WOW Top Ten is a simple idea to boost engagement and increase walking rates; The termly contest supports pupils’ health and wellbeing while reducing congestion and pollution around the school gates; Great Bradfords Junior School in Essex topped the Spring Leaderboard in the South, coming 5th out of all the participating English schools;

• Benefits of Active Travel…
• Last year, as part of Walk to School Outreach, Living Streets piloted a new, scalable approach to reaching primary school pupils across England – They offered of a series of online assemblies to WOW and non-WOW schools in England highlighting different aspects of the benefits of walking to school;
• These events were designed to raise the salience of active travel for pupils and staff, directly increasing active travel at schools by prompting conversations that would not otherwise happen, and indirectly increasing it by increasing the likelihood of the school participating in more intensive interventions such as WOW;
• Using the foundations of existing project activity where coordinators delivered special themed assemblies at key points in the calendar year, Living Streets developed the We Walk…assembly series – one free to access, online assembly every half term; These were seasonal, curriculum-linked and open to all; Each We Walk assembly highlights the benefits of active travel and then delves into a specific theme – We Walk…with confidence, We Walk…together, We Walk…for health, We Walk….for wellbeing, We Walk…for change;
• One assembly, for example, linked to Clean Air Day – Children watching are encouraged by presenters to answer questions at various points during the assembly and then take part in an interactive quiz towards the end; School staff share pupil responses in the online chat function;
• At the start of this academic year (25-26), Living Streets have offered another series of assemblies – These will act as both a gateway engagement activity for schools not yet involved with WOW and, for those schools already signed up, these assemblies will add value
  to their behaviour change activity and build a sense of inter-school community; We Walk assemblies are open to all schools in England and enable Living Streets to extend their reach;
• Project Stories: We Walk with…assembly series – The third ‘We Walk…for Health’ assembly in January focussed on taking a holistic view of health and wellbeing through food, movement and sleep; It had curriculum links to challenges, improving performance and developing a healthy lifestyle; The next `We Walk…with Awareness` assembly was in mid March and explored environmental awareness through sustainability, carbon footprints and the impact of our choices on local habitats;
• Takeley Primary School Case Study – Celebration assemblies were delivered in schools that demonstrated the highest rate of engagement during June, to thank pupils and staff for their dedication to travelling to school sustainably; Living Streets’ mascot, Strider, made a guest appearance; In Takeley Primary School, the number of journeys driven all the way to school decreased by 26% and those walked or wheeled all the way increased by 7%; The picture was similar at Helena Romanes Primary School, with a reduction of 25% in the number of car journeys and a 6% increase in walking and wheeling rates, reducing congestion and creating a safer environment at the school gates;

• Ashingdon Primary Academy School Route Audit Case Study – Living Streets visited Ashingdon Primary Academy in July 2025 to carry out a School Route Audit, which sees pupils go on a local walk and have their say about how their streets could be improved; The school was chosen due to its location on a busy 40mph road, with narrow, uneven footways and lack of crossings; The Headteacher and six Year 4 pupils attended the audit; All children agreed that they had a better understanding of the dangers outside their school because of the School Route Audit; Ashingdon Primary Academy joined WOW in February 2025 and has seen a 6% increase in the number of walking journeys;
• Thanks to ATE Travel England funding, schools in some areas in England are eligible to take part in WOW for free – that means access to Living Streets’ WOW Travel Tracker, resources and WOW badges; To find out more about WOW, visit livingstreets.org.uk/WOW or scan the QR code on the last slide; If you know a school in your area that would benefit from safer, cleaner streets and happier healthier
  pupils, then please spread the word!

If you satisfy our regular delegate qualification criteria but were unable to join in Westminster on October 9th for the live in-person event at The Wellington Hotel, CLICK HERE and complete the short “Download form” (located at the bottom of the post) to receive a unique link enabling free access to the presentation video recordings and slides (including the film footage and slides from Jo and Zoë’s initial presentation).

Those qualifying to receive the rich presentation content from this event include commissioning, procurement, trialling, partnering and policy leads, senior influencers, strategic decision makers, programme managers and planners from local authorities (e.g. city, borough, metropolitan, district and county councils); public transport operators; regional transport partnerships, sub-regional transport bodies, combined authorities, integrated transport authorities and passenger transport executives; highways authorities and road operators; government and supporting national transport agencies; non-governmental organisations; fleet operators, parking operators, prime contractors etc.