A successful Travel Plan will depend on the commitment and enthusiasm of the project manager or ‘School Champion’. This will generally be one, or possibly two, people in charge of coordinating all the parties who feed into the plan and who ensure that all the necessary steps are followed in order to get the plan approved.
The champion does not always have to be a teacher (although support from a senior staff member is of course important) – they could be a parent, teaching assistant, or governor. What is most important is that they are enthusiastic about the aims of the Travel Plan and are happy to affect real change in the way the school manages its transport issues.
Some schools have awarded temporary management points to teachers to complete the Travel Plan and then monitor it for a year. This is a great mechanism of ensuring ownership, but its suitability will vary from school to school.
We would also suggest that you think about creating ‘junior travel champions’ to represent pupils – they can offer a different perspective on the problems faced on the journey to school, and can also be involved in conducting analyses, doing assemblies etc.
