Friday 7 January 2011

Right, but for the wrong reasons...

From The Daily Mail:

Children are less likely to walk to school as their parents’ income increases, a study revealed today.

Richer parts of the country such as Barnet, Surrey and Bath all had low levels of walking, while relatively deprived areas such as Hull, Barking and Luton have high levels. The town which has the highest rate of school runs by car is well-heeled Windsor, where half its children get lifts to lessons.

But the figures, released by the Department of Transport, also dispel the myth of so-called Chelsea tractors ferrying young Henrys and Henriettas to private schools in London. Well-off parts of the capital like Kensington, Westminster and Fulham have some of the lowest car use in the country – with less than one in 10 children getting to lessons by vehicle.


The article drivels pleasantly on in the same manner for several column inches, but then they inadvertently give the real explanation:

In fact London boroughs, with the exception of more leafy outlying ones like Barnet, have some of the highest rates of pupils going by foot to their classes.

Yes, there is a correlation between parents' income and whether kids get taken to school by car: that is not because wealthier people own more cars (they probably do, but only slightly more), it is because wealthier people tend to live in more sparsely populated outer urban regions.

Conversely, kids in the hyper-rich but densely populated parts of west/central London walk to school because it is far quicker than driving. And kids in the poorer but equally densely populated parts of London like Barking also walk to school.

Further, wealthier parents are more likely to send their kids to a private school, and as there are far fewer private schools than there are state schools, by definition, the average distance from home to private school will be much further than from home to nearest state school.

14 comments:

dearieme said...

On income, I dunno, but on social class I have an observation. At our nipper's primary school, lots of the children cycled to school each September. When the weather turned inclement, it was the bourgoisie that kept on cycling; the proletarian mummy's boys vanished into cars toot sweet.

Lola said...

Heartless bastard that I am I made all four of my children cycle/walk to junior / secondary school(actually to the bus stop - we live rural). About 2 to 3 miles each way. Did 'em the power of good. Wouldn't have done me any good, but that's not the point.

Sean said...

A lot also depends on the general elevation of the surrounding area, if its hilly then kids are not going to cycle regardless of how poor or rich the parents are.

You see a lot of folks on bikes in Lincs, and very few in Yorkshire.

anyway if you are saving the planet you take the car.

Curmudgeon said...

This also helps explain the oft-reported statistic that poorer children are much more likely to be killed and injured on the roads than richer ones - it's all down to exposure.

Also more well-off parents are less likely to allow their little ones to hang around outside the offie at 10pm.

Tim Almond said...

It's not just about distance, but about whether you have a job to go to. Lots of the parents who run kids to school in a car are then travelling onward to work.

Bayard said...

My sister in law always ran my niece and nephews to school, a journey of about one mile (on foot, two miles by car), which as a child I had been made to walk by my mother, rain or shine. She justified her actions by saying that the other mothers would think she was an uncaring parent if she didn't. I don't think it's down to income, I think it's more down to middle class parents being more likely to believe that the path to school is beset with paedophiles.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Thanks for all the extra comments, this all highlights that there is a heck of a lot more to it that just money.

For my part, I walk my kids to (private) school, for the simple reason that when we decided where to rent, we rented a house very near where they were already going to school (about five - ten minutes walk). That is certainly the most convenient way of doing it.

View from the Solent said...

"In contrast children in Portsmouth and the Isles of Scilly are the most energetic.
Around 70 per cent of them walk to school and one in five cycles. "

Geography? Portsmouth is a densely populated, flat (highest point is a bridge over the railway) island. The schools are, roughly, evenly distributed. Not far to walk. And Windsor?

Curmudgeon said...

"Portsmouth is a densely populated, flat (highest point is a bridge over the railway) island. The schools are, rough"

(Selective quotation)

Mark Wadsworth said...

VFTS, indeed. Somebody from Portsmouth once told me that Portsmouth has the smallest gardens and the most compact layout of any town in the UK, so it doesn't surprise me that they are high up the 'not being taken to school by car' list.

Curmudgeon said...

Look at a map of Portsmouth (at least the island bit). It must now be the largest area of continuous terraced housing in the UK. They recently introduced a citywide 20 mph speed limit, apart from a few main roads. It made sod all difference to anything.

JuliaM said...

"And kids in the poorer but equally densely populated parts of London like Barking also walk to school."

I bet the bus drivers in Barking wished this was true of ALL of them!

Bayard said...

That comment about the Scilly Isles is fairly disingenuous. I would say that a high proportion of children go to school by boat (four inhabited islands, one school) and there's not much point in having a car on the Scillies anyway.

Mark Wadsworth said...

C, thanks, that backs up what I was told about Portsmouth (I decided to rely on anecdotal and not check Google Maps for that one).

JM, I bet most bus passengers wish that as well. But we are comparing "walk/bus/cycle" with "car".

B, one of us will have to go there and find out.