How has online learning helped us develop our primary road safety education?
Hampshire County Council’s Road Safety Team has run the Junior Road Safety Officer (JRSO) scheme since 2009, training JRSOs at two venues across the county. The day events were successful and included partnership working; the number of registered schools grew from 50 in 2009 to 125 in 2019.
When the pandemic hit, the Road Safety Team began running training online, via Teams. Offering online training meant schools could have more JRSOs trained, and they didn’t have to fund the member of staff and the travel costs to the venue.
The online session focuses on teaching the JRSOs about road safety as well as sharing ways they can teach their peers. The training is interactive, and the children get involved and take part in activities away from the screen.
As a result of moving to online training, 200 schools now participate in the scheme and the costs of the programme have dramatically reduced.
The success of the online JRSO training led us to consider how we could share our messages wider, taking advantage of online opportunities. Pre-pandemic, Hampshire had 130 schools involved in the programme and there were approximately 1500 children taking part in the Year 2 practical pedestrian training scheme. Since developing the online sessions, the team is now sharing key messages through the JRSO scheme, as well as offering virtual transition workshops to Years 5 & 6 children and basic green cross code workshops to Year 2 children.
The uptake of these sessions has been positive, meaning the team is now reaching approximately 15,000 students across the various sessions.
Julia Francis, Senior Road Safety Officer, Hampshire County Council
Before joining Hampshire County Council’s Road Safety Team, Julia Francis was a Primary School Teacher.
She was employed to launch and develop the Junior Road Safety Officer scheme in Hampshire, which initially meant planning, leading and evaluating the two training days and monitoring the scheme in schools.
Her role has subsequently led to developing the online version of the scheme as well as leading and developing the online primary programmes we are now offering. Julia also leads on Hampshire’s secondary road safety education programme.