Travelling to School

Travelling to School Introduction: The Changing Significance of School Travel It can be suggested that the journey to school may have changed more over the twentieth century than most other forms of everyday mobility. In addition to the changes in transport technology, economy and society that have affected all forms of mobility, and all age groups, there are a series of further factors that have fundamentally restructured the relationship of children and their families to schooling. First, the twentieth century has seen successive changes in the school leaving age and in the proportion of children attending school and college for postcompulsory education. Thus in England and Wales in 1900 compulsory statefunded education was under the control of elected school boards, with a school leaving age of 12. For most children this was the extent of their formal education. The 1902 Education Act transferred control of state education to county boroughs and county councils, establishing the primacy of local authority educational provision, and the 1918 act raised the school leaving age to 14. Following the widespread educational reforms of 1944, which established general primary and selective secondary education, the school leaving age was raised to 15, and it was increased again in 1971 to the age of 16 (Lawson and Silver, 1973; Royle, 1997; Doyle, 2000). In addition the last 50 years have seen a massive increase in the proportion of children over 15 staying at school after the compulsory school leaving age. Thus in 1951 19 per cent of children aged 16 and 9.8 per cent of children aged 17 were in education, whereas in 2001 77.6 per cent of children aged 16 and 17 were attending school or college. Although the provision of compulsory schooling did not have an immediate effect on all children and areas, for instance in 1904 the London School Board noted an attendance rate of 88 per cent (compared to 66 per cent in 1870 at the beginning of compulsory schooling), and in rural areas (especially at harvest time) school attendance continued to fluctuate, in general by the early-twentieth century most children under the age of 12 were attending school regularly (Gilbert and Southall, 2000). Gradually, during the twentieth century, going to school also became a normal rather than an exceptional, experience for most teenagers and the journey to school became a major, but routine, part of their life.