How does the Welsh Government plan to improve the tracking and evaluation of active travel progress, especially among school children, in light of the data gaps highlighted by the active travel board?
Welsh Government is committed to improving the monitoring and evaluation of walking, wheeling and cycling progress, particularly among school children, to address the data gaps identified by the Active Travel Board.
Transport for Wales
Transport for Wales will soon publish an Active Travel Monitoring Framework to track progress and measure the effectiveness of initiatives across Wales. This framework will include indicators like the percentage of schools with active travel plans. They are also working with Sustrans to improve local authorities’ data for all Active Travel Fund schemes, including school-related schemes.
Active Travel School Plans and Safe Routes in Communities grant
To date, 320 schools across Wales have developed an Active Travel School Plan which encourage schools to capture baseline data on travel to school to help inform things like Safe Routes in Communities grant applications.
The 2025-26 Safe Routes in Communities grant guidance published in October 2024 includes a new monitoring and evaluation plan example to encourage robust monitoring of schemes.
School data
The School Health Research Network (SHRN) conducts a biennial Student Health and Well-being Survey, providing a snapshot of 11-to-16-year-olds’ health behaviours. The results from the SHRN for walking and cycling to school were published in October 2024 here: Children’s Health & Well-being Dashboard. This questionnaire is compulsory and as a result it is representative of the secondary schools' population in Wales. From 2021 to 2023, there was an increase in walking and cycling to school in Swansea, Vale of Glamorgan, Cardiff, Merthyr Tydfil, and Blaenau Gwent. However, across Wales, there was a slight decrease from 35% to 33.2%.
Public Health Wales (PHW) coordinate an annual survey for primary schools to understand how pupils travel to school. The Travel to School Hands Up Survey (TtSHUS) took place on the 17th to 21st June 2024, with results due to be published by PHW shortly. In the 2024 TtSHUS, many individual schools (across Wales) have a high response rate, and at an individual school level the data could be used for a variety of measures and improvement actions. For example, 2024 school level data has already been requested to inform upcoming Safe Routes in Communities and School Street applications. However, due to a low response rate in most local authorities, caution must be taken when interpreting this data on a local authority level as respondents might not constitute a representative sample of primary school children in Wales.
More research is needed to understand the impact of school mergers, which may increase catchment areas and result in more pupils needing to travel by bus or car.
Welsh Government supports various behaviour change programmes aimed at increasing active travel among school children. By working closely with third sector delivery partners, we are supporting them to gather and report on walking, wheeling and cycling to school and modal shift. This includes reporting baseline and post-programme ‘Hands up Survey’ data as well as data from Living Streets’ Walk to School tracker and Sustrans’ ‘Tali Teithio’ survey.
Active Travel Board School sub-group
The Active Travel Board has established a school’s sub-group to bring together stakeholders from transport, education, and health. In 2024, this sub-group recommended establishing a school’s hub, approved by the Board. The Active Travel to School Hub (ATSH) will be based in Welsh Government and are currently working with partners on mapping and tracking active travel to school initiatives currently being delivered across Wales.