The Independent Travel Training team in collaboration with Fairmead School have just completed a pilot training scheme for year 11 students in support of their ‘Accessing the Community’ Studies. The programme ran for one afternoon a week over 2 Terms. The aim of the course was to work with students who on transitioning to further education may need help and support in accessing public transport to get to College.
The programme consisted in two major parts:
- Road safety, based around resources from the Government road safety campaign ‘THINK’ targeting children 13 – 16 yrs.
- Access the community using public transport.
The road safety is always the starting point for our training and as well as ensuring that the student can make the right choice in when and where is the safest place to cross, we also need to ensure they can take responsibility for themselves and are aware of their personal safety and have strategies should they encounter an unforeseen incident.
Once practical’s sessions started off-site the students were eager to demonstrate to us their road craft skills and were quick to respond to any advice on improving their technique. Throughout this phase students were presented with some challenging crossing situations of which they overcome.
Using the public bus meant 2 groups of 4 students were given introduction to bus timetables, bus etiquette and expectations and behaviour. The students were then given exclusive access to a bus at Yeovil Bus station and a presentation by the deputy manager Bob Cooney. This included what a bus driver does, how tickets are sold and issued and that drivers are there to help and support them should a student need it.
The students were then presented with their certificates of completion. All students will be offered additional support if needed and we wish them well for all of their independent travelling to come!
