Hands-up surveys

It’s time for a Hands-up Survey! 

A Hands-up Survey is as simple as it sounds – a poll of how the pupils in your school travel to and from school compared with how they would like to travel.

This helps you to understand your school’s travel habits and identify issues and areas for improvement.  You can also use it to compare result, to see the impact your work is having on attitudes and behaviour. 

You can use the results to calculate your school’s modal shift away from car use, which supports your TfL Travel for Life accreditation application, and shows if you have reached your targets.  

How to carry out your Hands-up Survey

Each class in your school will need to carry out a class Hands-up survey, which will all be added together to form your Whole School Survey. At least 90% of your school should complete the survey and ideally, all surveys should take place on the same day. If this is not possible, please try to ensure they are completed within the same week. 

You can capture the information on a paper form - but it's easier to use our online form. You can email a link to each teacher, and they can add their own class survey. It's very simple to do, just follow the instructions in the Survey section. 

If you have Early Years or KS1 classes, you may find it helpful to print out these icons and place them around the classroom. The children can stand next to the icon they want to vote for, and it's easier to stop them voting more than once!

When to carry out a Hands-up Survey

We ask that a survey is completed annually but if you haven't got a recent survey, you might want to carry one out at the start of the year to set a baseline, and then do a second survey after you've done your activities so you can see the impact. 

It's always a good idea to talk to your Borough Officer about the best time of year to carry out a Hands-up Survey, as there might be things specific to your Borough that affect the best time to do it.