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Bike to school competition

Suitable for primary or secondary school pupils.

Overview

Education phase

Early years Key stage 2 Key stage 3 Key stage 4 Key stage 5 Key stage 1

Categories of activity

Travel

Types of activity

Cycling

How it helps

  • Gateway to other cycling initiatives
  • Encourages daily active travel
  • Opportunity for TfL Travel Ambassadors involvement

Useful Resources

Bike Count Sheet

About the activity

Run a Bike-to-school competition with prizes on offer to encourage your pupils to get cycling.

You can offer one or multiple prizes to those who cycle the most depending on your budget. If little or no budget is available, approach your school community for donations or offer house or reward points for the winner’s class.

Running the activity

The competition can be run over a week, a month or a whole term.

This activity is an opportunity to involve your school travel working group in the planning, running and prize giving. 

Record the number of cyclists each day by asking them to complete a ticket with their name and class on. Collect these and count them up on the last day of the competition to find out who has cycled the most and reward your winner(s). Or, you can use a bike count sheet.

This activity can also spark team spirit and inter-class competition; see which class can tally up the most journeys or who cycles the most from each class.

 

Activity steps

Step 1

Plan the competition. Work with your school travel working group to decide how and when to run the competition. Discuss how you will promote it and what the prizes will be

Step 2

Promote. Let your school community about the competition - spread the word on posters, the website, in the newsletter and in assembly

Step 3

Count your tickets. See how the activity affects bike use by counting the number of tickets collected each day during the competition

Step 4

Pick the winners. With your team, pick your winner(s) and celebrate their victory in assemblies and the school newsletter

Step 5

Check for success. How did pupils find the competition? Did it encourage them to start cycling, or cycle more often? How could you improve next time?

Step 6

Tell your story! Upload your evidence to "my activities"