The Brightkidz ST:EPS Kettering project is delivered by Brightkidz in collaboration with local partners such as Northamptonshire Police and North Northants Council.
The scheme is funded in various ways: by the schools themselves, through road safety grants from the Office of the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, and through local business sponsorship. With Brightkidz being a social enterprise some costs are covered by the ploughed back profit from sales of our BrandMyThingy.com range of promotional products.
Schools taking part are linked to the resources they need to encourage walking to school, cycling, scooting and road safety.
We are seeking more schools and community partners in Kettering and across the rest of North Northamptonshire to join us in this pioneering scheme to promote safe, active travel for children.
Benefits for Local Schools
The ST:EPS Kettering project is supporting our own local schools in promoting safe, active, sustainable travel for children, linking schools to resources and guiding them to achieving the Modeshift STARS national school travel accreditation. This is all whilst helping schools meet other objectives such as health, fitness, road safety, attendance, learning, punctuality, parent engagement and raising the profile of the schools in the local community.
About Kettering
Kettering is a North Northamptonshire market town with a strong shoe-making heritage. It has good rail and road routes, is surrounded by lovely countryside but like many towns has problems with traffic congestion and bad parking, especially outside schools. The borough is famous for being Weetabix HQ (giving you energy before a morning cycle to school), producing specialist boots for the first Everest expedition (probably a bit clunky for the walk to school) and is hometown of popular comedian James Acaster.
The pioneering school for the ST:EPS Kettering project is Grange Primary Academy. They have taken part in many initiatives including road safety assemblies, cycle safe workshops, scooter training, Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel (a two week initiative to walk, scoot or cycle to school) and UN Global Road Safety Week. In 2021 they were the first school to receive a Modeshift STARS silver accreditation through the ST:EPS scheme and they were also the first school in the county to receive this national accreditation for school travel.
Compass Primary Academy followed and pupils from the school particularly enjoyed a visit from local park mascot Wicky Bear who joined them in Walk to School Week.
St Andrews Primary is also taking part with a special focus on promoting scooting to school. In addition as part of the scheme pupils from Hawthorn Primary School took part in Clean Air Day doing traffic counts and lichen investigations during the project’s early days.
Three primary schools so far have achieved Modeshift STARS accreditation as part of the project: Bronze for St Andrew’s C of E School, Compass Primary Academy and Silver for Grange Primary Academy.
Three local secondary schools took part in our Brightwayz ST:EPS project for older children – Southfield School, Kettering Buccleuch Academy and Isebrook SEN School. This was funded by the Northamptonshire Office of the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner’s Road Safety funding. As a result both Southfield School and Kettering Buccleuch Academy were awarded the Bronze Modeshift STARS for their achievements within the project. Kettering Buccleuch Academy has gone on to work towards the Silver level and is likely to be the first secondary school in the county to achieve this.
Take part in ST:EPS North Northants
We are keen to work with more schools across the county – both within Kettering and further afield. If you are a teacher interested in taking part, please get in touch with your queries or to arrange a FREE 30 minute consultation with us.