Pupils tackle parents head-on about parking

PUPILS TACKLE PARENTS HEAD ON ABOUT PARKING

PUPILS aged five to 11 at a primary school in Burncross have come up with a novel way to solve the parking problems blighting their school – they have become the parking patrol!

On selected mornings and afternoons, so that the culprits don’t know when to expect it, the pupils themselves are donning high visibility vests and taking to the streets outside school holding up posters saying ‘Think before you park’ and ‘Please don’t pull-up here’, supported by the school’s head teacher and learning mentor.

Head teacher Joanne Grantham said: “I don’t think the problem at Windmill Hill is any different to that experienced at any other school. Modern lives are so busy that sometimes common sense goes out of the window and they park or drive in a way that isn’t safe for our pupils.

“However it’s an issue that’s constantly raised as a concern by parents in our parent surveys, it worries staff and clearly it worries the pupils themselves too. They came up with the Parking Patrol idea and I’m very pleased to support them.

“We’ve had a fantastic response from most parents who’ve been walking past the children praising them for taking action.”

Members of the School Council for Windmill Hill Primary School, which includes two elected representatives from each of the school’s classes, have long worried about the parking outside school at the beginning and end of the day.

Last year they persuaded the school’s parent-teacher association to pay for banners for the school fence, and plastic figures of school children to put outside the school, but more than six months on they’re still concerned about the issue.

Emily Care, aged 10, who is the chair of the School Council said: “It’s improved a lot since we’ve been going out on parking patrol because it’s helping children cross the road safely.

“Lots of people were parking on double yellow lines, the zigzags outside of school and on the corners of the roads which meant it was very dangerous to cross. This is because it wasn’t possible to see cars coming and children had to cross the road between cars or step out into the road to get past them.”

In 2017 a newspaper investigation named Sheffield drivers as the worst in Yorkshire for parking dangerously and illegally outside schools.

Drivers in the city were charged for a catalogue of parking failures near schools, including parking on a pedestrian crossing, and parking on double and single yellow lines. Sheffield council revealed that 113 primary school children had been injured – 32 seriously –in crashes across the city occurring at school pick-up and drop off times over the last five years.