School travel interventions are often developed around broad assumptions about the barriers to walking, wheeling and cycling. However, schools serving the same geographical area can have markedly different travel behaviours, experiences and perceptions of safety. The Safer and Sustainable School Journeys (SSSJ) project in Darnall, Sheffield explored whether behavioural profiling could provide a more nuanced basis for developing school-specific interventions.

Methods
The project engaged 488 pupils across three partner schools in Darnall and the surrounding area: Phillimore (n=185), High Hazels (n=149) and Oasis Don Valley (n=154). School Council insight-gathering sessions used visual journey mapping to explore how pupils travelled to school, how they experienced their journeys, what they enjoyed and found difficult, and how they felt on arrival. These insights were considered alongside parent perceptions, school characteristics, existing road safety and active travel provision, and spatial analysis of pupils' proximity to school. The resulting data were used to develop behavioural profiles for each school and identify implications for intervention design.

Results
The three schools demonstrated substantially different travel and behavioural profiles. At Phillimore, 66% of pupils walked to school and walking was strongly associated with social interaction, enjoyment and wellbeing. The school also had an established walking culture. At High Hazels, travel was more mixed, with 47% walking and 37% travelling by car, while crossing roads and traffic emerged as important concerns. Oasis Don Valley presented the most striking contrast: 82% of pupils travelled by car and only 18% walked, despite 81.5% of pupils living within a 15-minute walk of school.

Pupils at Oasis also reported traffic and tiredness among their difficulties. The findings suggest that a single intervention model would be unlikely to address the different behavioural and contextual starting points of the three schools. At Phillimore, intervention priorities centred on strengthening existing walking culture, maintaining safe crossings and supporting families during adverse weather. At Oasis, the data pointed towards a different set of priorities, including improving walkability, reducing traffic dominance, creating safer and more engaging walking routes, and supporting families to shift established travel habits.

Implications
The project demonstrates the potential value of behavioural profiling as a practical bridge between insight gathering and intervention design. Rather than treating schools as homogeneous populations, profiling can identify different behavioural starting points and help practitioners target interventions according to local context, perceived safety, existing behaviours and opportunities for change. The approach may provide a useful framework for developing more proportionate, evidence-informed and school-specific road safety and active travel interventions.

Dr Mira Lieberman, Project Officer, Sheffield City Transport, Sheffield City Council

Mira is a project officer at Sheffield City Council, working on an interdisciplinary project between City Transport and Public Health in Sheffield. The research project aims to increase 10-13 year olds safer and sustainable travel to schools through an intervention based on behaviour change techniques, as well as hardware measures.

Mira holds a PhD in environmental accounting from the University of Sheffield, where she researched corporate accountability towards hedgehogs in the agrochemical industry.