Children and young people can learn about road safety in many different ways, both within and outside the school environment.
There is currently no statutory guidance for teaching road safety in schools in the UK, yet many schools do still teach pupils about road safety, and safe and healthy mobility, and this is mainly done through PSHE or Citizenship lessons. It's reasonable to assume that the way that road safety is taught varies widely across the UK – in terms of frequency, methodology, quality and effectiveness.
Schools are free to cover teaching about road safety as part of their duty to provide a broad and balanced curriculum, including through their Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) education provision.
Nick Gibb, Minister of State for School Standards
Through a series of focus groups, interviews and surveys, Brake spoke to teachers and educational experts to find out what they think about teaching road safety in schools and hear their recommendations for how teaching resources should be developed.
The vast majority of educators who were involved in this project told us they would like road safety teaching to be a statutory part of the curriculum, and they would like more resources to support this. However, they also expressed concerns relating to curriculum squeeze and the lack of time available to teach additional subjects.
Brake has written a report that includes 12 key recommendations to be considered when developing new resources to support the teaching of road safety and safe and healthy mobility in schools.
Click on the links below to read the full report, a summary and an overview of the recommendations.
Read the full report
Read a short summary of the report
Read an overview of the recommendations
The consultation took place between November 2019 and September 2020 and was funded by the Department for Transport.