Kids lead the way on cycle safety
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Almost 300 pupils from primary schools across the Highlands gathered for an important road safety training programme last week.
The Scotland-wide Junior Road Safety Officers (JRSO) puts children in control of highlighting road safety issues for their own schoolmates.
Particularly empowering for the senior pupils of P6 and P7 training gives them the opportunity to become accredited JRSOs for a year.
Their tasks include organising a road safety noticeboard for their school as well as delivering safety presentations to individual classes or assemblies and even running school road safety competitions.
Training days for the newest batch of apsiring JRSOs were organised by Highland Council’s road safety team last week and held at Eden Court in Inverness as well as in Wick.
At the training days pupils were provided with all the information they need from a number of organisations to help them undertake their roles within their schools, making sure their fellow pupils stay as sfae as possible when they are out and about on two wheels..
These included Highland Council as well as the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, Road Safety Scotland, Sustrans and HiTrans; Living Streets; Police Scotland and Cycling Scotland.
At the Inverness event 236 children took take part representing 57 schools, while in Wick 59 JRSOs attended the training representing 13 schools.
Councillor Allan Henderson, chairman of council’s environment, development and infrastructure committee, said: "Saving lives is what these two very important training days were all about.
"The training provided helps senior pupils to deliver the important role of Junior Road Safety Officer in their areas.
"It empowers them to share road safety education information to their fellow pupils and encourages them to adopt sustainable travel choices and fosters a safe and healthy highland school population."
