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School run: Cutting car use will take much more than educating children and parents:
As the summer holidays come to an end and children return to school following lockdown, there couldn't be a better time for us to consider the school commute. Nowadays, many children in the UK commute to school by car. But getting more parents to ditch the car for school journeys and switch to more active modes of travel, such as walking or cycling, is of great public health importance.
[...] As cities have expanded under suburban sprawl, commuting distances to school have increased. They are longer now than they have ever been before. This is another reason more children travel to school by car now than they used to. Less than half of all children in England attend their most local school.
An education policy that lets parents choose their child's school compounds the issue of suburban sprawl. Those parents that are able to exercise choice do so, and in some cases travel great distances so that their child attends the best-performing school. Once school choice has been decided, so too has children's mode of travel to school. Longer school commutes equals more car travel.
[...] Tackling the real causes of car dependency on the school commute would benefit children, society and the environment. It would solve several public health challenges.
If all children attended their local school, fewer children would travel by car, and because of this, fewer children would be injured on the roads. There would be less noise pollution and less air pollution, which would reduce children's risk of developing respiratory conditions. We would see more people speaking to each other on our streets because of the increase in footfall, and there would be an improved sense of safety because there would be more "eyes on the street."
Will eliminating school choice for children make them healthier?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @11:33AM (2 children)
I know this is often-stated opinion, but it's entirely possible to get to a great university from a state school, and those that do tend to do well. You just have to be actually good at school. I did it, got a 1st in Maths and Computation from Oxford after my state school education. Sure, there were lots of Eton-toffs at Oxford, but there are actually quite a lot of state school students too.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Friday August 28 2020, @12:35PM (1 child)
There could not have been that many - Eton is not big enough to swamp Oxford and Cambridge with its ex-scholars. And Eton, as you mention it, is very selective of its intake, so it is not surprising that it punches above its weight in university entrance statistics and in subsequent public life. I went to a state school BTW.
It is a myth that Oxbridge and other leading universities choose entrants on the basis of their school. It is based on academic results, but it is a fact that some schools get better academic results than others because they are better at teaching and also because the kids in the areas they serve are more culturally open to being taught. There are some sub-cultures in the UK (and no doubt in other nations) in which it is regarded as shameful or wimpy to achieve anything academically, so it is hardly any wonder that there are fewer university entrants from those schools.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2020, @03:11PM
> some sub-cultures in the UK
My estimate would be about 90%.