Travel mode to independent and sen schools (stirling) hands-up survey - open data Edit

Hands Up Scotland Survey 2023: Overview An Official Statistics Publication for Scotland – May 2024

The annual Hands Up Scotland Survey, now in its fifteenth year, is published by Sustrans. The survey is funded by Transport Scotland and is designed to provide reliable and up to date information on mode of travel to school in Scotland.

The question posed to all school pupils and nursery children is, ‘How do you normally travel to school?’ with a choice of travel modes.

The travel modes are categorised as follows:

Active travel: walking, cycling and scootering or skating
Public sustainable travel: bus
Multi-mode travel: park and stride (driven part of the way by car and walk the rest)
Private motorised travel: driven (car) and taxi.

Over three-quarters (78.9%) of all state schools in Scotland (excluding nurseries) took part in the 2023 survey. Responses were received from over 443,000 school pupils and over 39,000 nursery children. A full report detailing the national level findings and greater technical detail on the data collection is also available.

Document Link

Key findings

Active travel to school has declined since 2022, but remains higher than the pre-pandemic levels of 2019.

The key findings from the 2023 survey are:

In 2023, the percentage of school pupils travelling actively to school, either by walking, cycling, scootering or skating, is at 49.3%. This represents a continued decrease since a 51.2% high in 2020, but is still higher than the pre-pandemic levels of 2019 (47.8%)
Cycling is at its highest level of the past ten survey years at 4.7%, 0.8 percentage points (pp) higher than the previous year
Walking rates decreased for the third year in a row, decreasing by 1.3pp, but is still by far the most common way school pupils get to school
The percentage of pupils scootering or skating to school increased to 3.3%, its highest level of the past ten survey years
Bus use has increased for the third year in a row, increasing by 0.6pp to 16.4%. This is comparable to pre-pandemic levels and is the highest level since 2017
The proportion of pupils being driven to school saw a 0.6pp drop since 2022, to 22.5%. This is the lowest level since 2016.

Resources

Additional Info

License	UK Open Government Licence v3.0
Category	Budget / Finance, Education, Parks / Recreation, Sport and Leisure, Transportation
Maintainer	Stirling Council
Date Created	2025-03-26
Date Updated	2025-03-26
Original dataset link	https://data-stirling-council.hub.arcgis.com/datasets/stirling-council::travel-mode-to-independent-and-sen-schools-stirling-hands-up-survey-open-data