Over 100 secondary and primary school children and teachers will be attending the NCT Respect for Transport Golden Safemark Awards at The Council House in Nottingham on Tuesday 9th October to collect their Safemark certificates.
These awards will be made in recognition of the excellent co-operation between NCT and the schools themselves, to ensure safe and respectful transport of pupils to and from school.
One school will also be awarded the Golden Safemark, launched by NCT this year to recognise and reward the school or schools whose pupils have demonstrated the best behaviour while travelling on school buses.
The scheme has built on the success of the existing Safemark scheme, which was launched in 2005 and introduced a Code of Conduct between NCT and participating schools on pupil travel.
More than 30 secondary schools in the city and county have signed up to Safemark, which promotes safe and responsible travel among pupils while travelling to and from school.
Safemark has proved a success. Since launch, incidents of poor behaviour among pupils on NCT school journeys has fallen. This is not only due to the Code of Conduct, but because head teachers are co-operating more with the bus company when incidents do occur. Now, the Golden Safemark will recognise those pupils whose behaviour is seen to be consistently better than the average.
Dave Astill, Commercial Manager of NCT, said: “We are delighted at the response and co-operation received from schools in the city and county, this is NCT’s way of acknowledging their hard work and all the efforts made to ensure safe pupil travel on our network. We are also pleased that several primary schools have joined in with this initiative and look forward to building even stronger alliances in the future.”
Safemark and Golden Safemark are both supported by the Respect for Transport campaign, which aims to reduce actual and perceived levels of crime and anti-social behaviour on Nottingham’s buses and trams.
Vandalism and anti-social activity on school buses not only affects the morale of drivers; it also has a financial cost to NCT, which has to pay to repair and clean up damage. Furthermore antisocial behaviour on the buses also deters other passengers from using public transport.
The golden Safemark initiative has generated several nominations from NCT passengers commending excellent school pupils’ behaviour whilst travelling with NCT. Drivers at NCT have also been involved in nominating good school children behaviour and co-operation.
Respect for Transport was launched in July 2004 and is backed by Nottinghamshire police, Nottingham City Council, Nottingham City Transport, Nottinghamshire County Council, Nottingham Express Transit, JC Decaux, British Transport Police and Greater Nottingham Transport Partnership’s The Big Wheel.
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