Andy and St Frideswide Primary School

Andy (left) is a teacher at St Frideswide School and champion of the school’s St FridesRide cycle programme.           

At St Frideswide’s we’re really keen to get more people on bikes and we have a dedicated programme, ‘St FridesRide’, to encourage more cycling, which includes a bike library, help with cycle training and now a bike bus. We fundraised for the programme – I have ridden to Land’s End and back twice now, and friends have ridden from England to Switzerland along the Rhine and to Croatia – and we even managed to raise enough for a new specialist small group teacher.

It all started four years ago when the school was given 12 bikes, originally from Thames Valley Police. They sat in storage for three years because no-one had the time or expertise to sort them out and get them to children.

I was shown the bikes when I started St FridesRide in May 2024, and once they had been de-cobwebbed, oiled and serviced, they were issued in July 2024 to our first intrepid cyclists.

Our aim is for the programme to give children the joy and freedom of riding their own bicycle. Once they experience this, they grow in cycling confidence. Now with Bikeability courses, and our first bike bus taster sessions, led by volunteers and members of Cyclox, we want to help both children and adults to ride considerately around other riders, and get children out onto roads safely. 

The development of our bike library

After the first 12 bikes were loaned out I contacted friends and family to advertise our St FridesRide fundraising and our bike library. The next 20 bikes came from outside our school community – parents were a little slow to engage and not that many of our families are cyclists.

Gradually however we have built an understanding: we lend bikes and do almost all the servicing and repairs, for free.

When a child grows out of a bike they bring it in and swap for a bigger one. Once this message has got around – through our actions not words – families have started bringing in other bikes. We have now reached a stage where nearly all the additions to our library – perhaps 60 bikes now – are from our own families. 

Key elements to this have been:

1. My presence at the end of specific bike library days, sometimes with a bike repair stand. You have to be seen and available.

2. My role as a teacher in school giving me all day availability for a chat. 

3. Doctor Bike days offering free servicing and repairs to anyone from our school community with a bike.

4. Lending bikes to siblings not at St Frideswide, and lending or selling cheap to parents.

5. My ability to fix basics – brakes and gear cables, saddle adjustment etc. 

6. I work three days per week and am not a class teacher – so have more spare time.

Cycle training for adults

We learned form conversations with our parents that some did not know how to cycle or hadn’t cycled in years, and others were intimidated by busy roads around the school, so we are trying to organise more cycle training sessions:  Broken Spoke Bike Coop, Oxford County Council, Active Oxford and Cyclox are all interested in helping.

We have had one parent approach us for adult cycle lessons, she has one of our bikes but cannot ride and wants to join her children.

Bike bus

We also have a taster bike bus (a supervised group cycle to school for adults and children) running every Friday morning. It’s a very short route and not particularly exciting, but the kids love it. 

We started in the last two weeks of the summer term and had two to four children turn up at first. We now have eight children regularly riding with a parent or carer and some brilliant volunteers from Cyclox. 

Cyclox have been a huge help in setting this up and keeping it running. It just wouldn’t have been possible without them, but we hope in time that we’ll have enough trained parent volunteers to do it ourselves. The children often turn up without helmets so I always take a few along, and some parents don’t have bikes so think they can’t join in, but we have given one from our bike library and sold one from the library to help get people riding. 

The kids love meeting and chatting with their friends as they go round and there’s a real feeling of community spirit. So far it’s been really popular with participants and school staff love it. There is curiosity from many parents but they are nervous about the traffic risk. We need to keep building confidence.

If anyone is thinking about starting a bike bus, Cycling UK has some great advice on How to Set up a Bike Bus that is a great place to start. 

Active Travel Inspectors scheme

Another initiative we’re trialling at the school is the Active Travel Inspectors scheme which aims to empower Key Stage 2 pupils (age 7 –11) to inspect their school neighbourhood, identifying ways to make walking, wheeling, and cycling easier and more enjoyable for school journeys. We’re just at the set-up stage with this, but with a free downloadable teacher booklet and activity sheets for pupils, it should be easy enough to implement. We’ll look at seven areas: School Grounds, Spaces to Explore, Crossing the Road, Pavements for People, Motorised Traffic, Green Space and Sounds Around Us and assess them together. 

Results are shared with the local authority and the children get Active Travel Inspector certificates. We’re hoping it will increase awareness of the importance of safe routes to school, empower children to advocate for safer routes, while at the same time giving local authorities child-led data on infrastructure, congestion, and air quality.