Children's fitness will be affected by School's closure

12.00.00am GMT Sun 7th Mar 2010

If the closure of Thomas Lord Audley Secondary School at Monkwick goes ahead - with the result that children will have to be driven almost three miles to The Stanway School - this will result in pupils becoming less fit, affecting their quality of life.

That was the claim made today by Colchester MP Bob Russell who quoted scientific research carried out at the University of Essex which shows that children who are driven to school have the lowest levels of physical fitness.

The findings of the research have so shocked Mr Russell that he has Tabled a Parliamentary Question to the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, the Rt Hon Ed Balls MP, asking him what assessment he has made of the relative fitness levels of pupils who walk or cycle to school and those who are driven.

And Mr Russell, who is continuing his Parliamentary campaign to save both Thomas Lord Audley and Alderman Blaxill School at Shrub End from closure by the Conservative-controlled Essex County Council, has also Tabled an Early Day Motion.

This welcomes the study by Dr Gavin Sandercock and Christine Voss, of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University's Wivenhoe Park campus, "and calls on the Government to encourage schools to promote cycling and walking as a means of raising fitness levels amongst pupils, with particular emphasis on providing safe cycle routes."

The research shows that children who are driven to school have the lowest levels of physical fitness, being less fit than walkers, cyclists and children who took the bus. For the age group 10 to 16, boys who walked to school were 20 per cent more likely to be fit compared with those using motorised transport; and for girls the figure was 30 per cent.

Even more striking, boys who cycled to school were 30 per cent fitter while female pupils were seven times more likely to reach the minimum fitness standard than girls who were driven to school.

The research involved 6,000 pupils in the East of England.

Mr Russell commented: "We all know that Britain is experiencing an obesity health time-bomb, with obesity levels amongst our young people increasing at an alarming rate year after year. Yet we have the appalling proposal by Essex County Council to deliberately make the fitness levels of pupils from the Monkwick area of Colchester put at greater risk by the idiotic proposal to shut Thomas Lord Audley School and transport pupils twice a day when currently most either walk or cycle.

"It is bad enough that the County Tories want to destroy a fine community school whose exam results and increased admissions last September prove that the original reasons for advocating its closure no longer apply, but this research shows that the fitness levels of children from Monkwick and district will be seriously damaged through the consequences of them being driven to school rather than cycling and walking which is currently the case."

He added: "The County is bordering on the criminal with this closure plan, for it is doing so in the certain knowledge that the fitness levels of the children involved - and thus their future health prospects - will be put at serious risk."

Mr Russell concluded: "And the additional cars and buses carrying pupils will add to Colchester's already appalling traffic congestion, providing yet another example of how County Hall at Chelmsford has failed the people and town of Colchester. It is time that we broke away from County Hall and let Colchester run all its own affairs, as is the case at Southend."