ST Patrick’s BNS, Skibbereen, has been named one of Ireland’s Sustainable Travel Schools of the Year at a ceremony in Dublin.
An Taisce Green Schools presented the school with their award at the even, honouring the winners of this year’s Green Schools Big Travel Challenge.
The ultimate aim of the challenge is to encourage students, parents and teachers to walk, cycle, scoot, Park ‘n’ Stride, use public transport or car pool instead of using the private car on the school run.
Schools, including St Patrick’s took on the Big Travel Challenge from the 4th to 14th of February, during which they were asked to concentrate on one or more sustainable transport modes for two weeks to see if they could achieve real, lasting change in the travel behaviour of their staff and students.
The challenge is an initiative of the Green Schools Travel theme, which is supported by the NTA and the Department of Transport.
St Patrick’s BNS, a school of 197 students, chose walking/wheeling, cycling and scooting as their sustainable modes of travel.
They almost doubled their initial numbers with 39% of students travelling in a sustainable way.
They increased their numbers steadily throughout the nine-day period through friendly competition in the school, and by the final day of the challenge, an impressive 78% were walking, scooting or cycling.
