School's lessons give road safety (From Penarth Times)

School's lessons give road safety

A PENARTH school has praised a Vale Council initiative aimed at getting their children safely across the road.

Teachers at Evenlode Primary have been giving 'Kerbcraft' lessons for the past 12 months in a bid to raise awareness of safety issues.

Headmaster Alun Jenkins said: "We were very pleased to get involved with Kerbcraft because it is very beneficial for the children to be taught road safety.

"We were approached by the Vale of Glamorgan Council to take part in the scheme.

"The school thought it would be an ideal place to have it because of our well known traffic congestion problems."

He added: "Parents do walk their children here but when they have to go secondary school the Kerbcraft will be very useful to make pupils more aware.

"I have seen a definite improvement in the awareness of classes taking part in the project."

Kerbcraft has to be run with volunteers as it is labour intensive and parents help out with the Evenlode project each week.

Vale Road Safety Officer Mike Dacey said: "The project has been running at Evenlode for about a year now and it has been very successful.

"We chose this school because it is one of the sites that is given the title of a Safe Routes to school establishment."

He added: "In the Vale there are only so many which run Kerbcraft.

"The Welsh Assembly allocates funding for schools to take part in teaching children to be safe.

"It was started to try to lower the amount of pupils who were involved in accidents."

The road safety programme was first used in Glasgow where there was an alarming number of accidents involving children.

The scheme was so successful it was started in other areas.

Now ten primary schools a week in the Vale of Galmorgan teach five to seven-year-olds to cross the road with the help of Vale of Glamorgan Kerbcraft co-ordinator Jayne Jenkins.