Bicycle Network: Teachers

A passport to frequent riding

Seymour East Primary School are getting more students walking and riding with a nifty little Ride2School tool we call The Frequent Rider Passport.

The bike shed at Seymour East Primary School is full every day. A large reason for this is a simple scheme the school introduced in third term. It’s called the Frequent Rider Passport, and it has really captured the imagination of the kids at Seymour, and quite a few other Victorian schools.  “It’s worked fantastically”, says teacher Leah Ficarra.

So how exactly does it work?
Each student who rides is given a laminated card, and a lanyard to attach it to. Around the edge of the card are numbered squares which are punched with a hole each time the student rides to school. This way the students keep a record of how many rides they have done.

It has given extra incentive for students to cycle to school more consistently. At Seymour East there was the added incentive of a prize at the end of a month’s riding. Every student who had 10 or more “clicks” on their passport went into the draw for a bike computer.

The students were encouraged to ride whenever possible. There was no obligation to have a hole in every square. Some students, however, took great pride in the fact that they had ridden every day. Grade 6 student Matthew hasn’t missed a day’s riding on his passport. He says the passports are a good idea because they “get everyone riding more”. Another grade 6 student, Connor, says “It’s good to see how many rides you have done.”

At Seymour East the responsibility for clipping the passports was given to the school’s sport captains. A captain was given the “clicker” for a week. The students who ride go to the captain to get a click sometime during the day. It’s a system that has worked well. At other schools, the clicker was left on a hook in the bikeshed, and the riders punched their own passports.

At Seymour East the Frequent Rider Passports have worked so well that teacher Leah has decided to keep the scheme going until the end of the year.

Super Stupendous Cycling Siblings!! The first week of term, Georgia, Bree and Lachlan – all from the same family - have ridden to school every day. They have each received their Frequent Riders’ Passport and have had it clicked each day.

For more information about how your school can introduce Frequent Rider Passports, click here.

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