Pupils in Burnley are celebrating coming second on a national leader board of schools making strides to walk or wheel to school.

Burnley Stoneyholme Primary School in Oswald Street is one of 10 schools on the 'WOW Top Ten' leader board for February 2024.

WOW, the walk to school challenge from charity 'Living Streets', sees pupils record how they get to school using the interactive WOW Travel Tracker.

Those who walk, wheel, cycle, scoot or ‘Park and Stride’ to school are awarded a monthly WOW badge.

Stephen Edwards, chief executive of Living Streets, said: “We are very happy to reward pupils from Burnley Stoneyholme Primary School as part of the WOW Top Ten.

"Walking to school is a simple way for children to meet the recommended 60 minutes of physical activity a day needed to stay fit, healthy and happy.

"It can also reduce congestion, air pollution and road danger outside the school gates.

“It’s great that pupils at Burnley Stoneyholme Primary School are benefitting from walking to school.

"They are an inspiration and I’m sure that they’ll encourage other children and their families to follow in their footsteps.”

The WOW Top Ten helps boost pupils’ engagement and increases walking rates at schools.

With a few challenges scattered across the school year, WOW Top Ten supports pupils’ health and wellbeing while reducing congestion and pollution around the gates.

This term, pupils at Stoneyholme Primary took part in the spring WOW Top Ten which asked them to walk to school as many times as possible between February 1 and 29.

Pupils who live too far away or are not able to walk the whole way to school were encouraged to 'Park and Stride' by asking their parents or carers to park at least 10 minutes away from the school and walk or wheel the rest of the way.

In England, 41 per cent of five to 10-year-olds are normally driven to school, and Living Streets is working to reverse this decline in regular walking exercise.

Lisa Davison, Headteacher at Burnley Stoneyholme Primary School, said: “Our children have embraced the Travel Tracker scheme from Living Streets and have enjoyed collecting the different badges for a number of years.

"Our staff can often be found on the gates awarding stickers to our children that choose healthy ways to travel and we work closely with Birmingham Connected and Bikeability UK to promote active ways to travel with our families.

“Living Streets Travel Tracker has been a crucial part of our active travel plan and helped us to become the first school in Birmingham to achieve the platinum ModeShift Stars award last year and it has helped to reduce the traffic and congestion around our school's local roads during the school run.”