This guide is for schools looking to get accredited on Modeshift STARS to Bronze level for the first time. The below timeline outlines the steps needed to accredit your school travel plan to Bronze within a school term.
Modeshift has multiple levels of awards from Green as the most basic, to Bronze, Silver, Gold and then the highest recognition which is Platinum. Generally, you cannot jump awards, for instance, to attain Silver you must have achieved Bronze within the three prior windows, and for Gold, you must have achieved Silver within the prior three windows of accreditation. The only exception for this is with Green and Bronze as you can immediately go for Bronze in your first attempt.
Page contents:
- Step one: Login to Modeshift STARS
- Step two: Complete background information
- Step three: Run your hands-up survey with pupils and staff
- Step four: Complete your transport issues
- Step five: Set two targets
- Step six: Detail your current initiatives
- Step seven: Finish and email the Safer Travel Team to say you've completed your school travel plan
Step one: Login to Modeshift STARS
This is to be ideally completed across week one.
Contact the Safer Travel team at schooltravelplans@surreycc.gov.uk and ask to be registered as a user for your school's plan. There is no limit to the number of users who can be registered, but to prevent duplicated data it would be a good idea to have a single person who is in charge and manages the plan.
Once this has been done you should receive an email from Modeshift asking you to set up a password and then you should be able to access the site. Now you can Login to Modeshift STARS. If at any time you cannot remember your password, just click 'forgotten password' in the bottom right corner of the login screen.
As it probably is your first time using Modeshift, you may find it a bit confusing. Sometimes it is not immediately the most intuitive website to navigate. The Safer Travel Team runs regular training tutorials on how to use it. Contact us at schooltravelplans@surreycc.gov.uk and we can help you.
The first tab you will see is the Site tab. Most of the information here will already be prepopulated. You should also see Introduction, Aims and Objectives, Working Group, Travel and Transport Infrastructure, Accreditation Progress and Users for site.
Top tip: You may find that some of above-mentioned tabs are not here when you first log in. If so, there is a quite simple remedy. Select the pencil icon in the top right corner and then edit one of the sections. For instance, one of the first you might edit could be, Travel Plan Coordinator in the Site tab. Write the name of whoever oversees the plan in the school and then scroll down and hit the Save button. Once this is complete, the additional tabs will appear.
Step two: Complete background information
To be completed across week two.
You will now look to populate the Introduction, Travel and Transport and Aims and Objectives tabs making sure all fields are completed. Introduction will be where you will complete a lot of the background information about your school, such as the number of staff and pupils and the school opening and closing times.
Travel and Transport will be where you will detail the different ways your school is accessed by staff and pupils, and detail about the road infrastructure nearby such as zebra crossings, as well as the parking facilities available. Be sure to complete every editable box and if there is a box asking for something your school doesn't have, simply put a zero rather than leaving the section blank to show you have looked it. This may seem like a lot of work but once complete it is likely to only change very little over future years and will only need simple edits after this. Your travel plan is a public facing document, and the more detail you input into this section, the easier it will be for the public to understand how children can travel to your school.
The next section to complete is Aims and Objectives. Your aim is what your ambition will be for creating the travel plan at your school, and the objectives should be structured using the SMART framework. We have an FAQ page, which advises how to complete all the tabs in your plan.
Top tip: Make sure you input or update where your pupils and staff are travelling in from. This can be included in the Intro to your site field or in the Transportation links field.
Step three: Run your hands-up survey with pupils and staff
To distribute the survey across weeks three and four. To input survey results across weeks six and seven.
Primary schools need an 80% response rate from pupils and 50% from staff to meet threshold. Secondary schools need a 70% response rate from pupils and 50% from staff to meet threshold.
After all pupils and staff have completed the survey using the survey link that you will send out across the school, make sure that the student travel modal shift and staff travel modal shift tabs are showing and show your survey data.
Top tip: Modeshift have made initiating and sending a survey out to your classroom teachers and staff easier. Just copy and paste the link under survey link in the site tab. Ask the classroom teachers to input all fields such as name of class, year group and no. of students absent and then input the hands-up data for the day they conducted the survey and click save at the end. For staff, you'll be requesting them to select staff individual and then completing and clicking save.
Step four: Complete your transport issues
To be completed across weeks three and four.
Your transport issues are those which affect any travel to your school and what you are ultimately hoping to solve. You should try and identify the issue itself rather than what the solution might be. For instance, you might wish to include an issue noting the lack of safe crossing points on the road outside the school. This though is more of a solution to problem, rather than the issue which might be written as, the volume of traffic making it difficult for pupils and parents to cross the road. At other times there might be a low level of congestion which would create a separate issue which would be, drivers speeding on the road outside the school.
Modeshift needs a minimum of one issue, though often most schools have many more. Your plan should represent a cohesive web, with your issues relating to your aims and objectives, and your targets and initiatives (detailed later) should link to the issues that they are trying to solve.
Step five: Set two targets
To be completed across week five.
Enter the results from your pupil and staff survey before setting your targets.
For the next 12 months, you will need to set a minimum of two targets. These can be a mix of:
- a modal shift target, (modal shift being a change in how pupils or staff travel to school) relevant to your pupil / staff survey such as looking for an increase in those walking/cycling to school
- a qualitative target, for example, 'reducing the number of resident complaints about poor parent parking by x% over the next 12 months'.
You will need at least one modal shift target for the next year. These targets should also relate to your issues, and you must have initiatives which support meeting these targets.
When inputting your two targets, please state in the target description what the period is that you're setting the target within, for example 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2022, and when you think the target will be met by, such as 1 June 2022.
Step six: Detail your current initiatives
To be started in week six and completed in week eight, after the half-term break.
For Bronze accreditation you need at least 10 completed travel initiatives, five completed supporting travel initiatives and at least two completed consultation initiatives.
Top tip: All initiatives can be backdated over the last three years and will still count. Try to make sure though that these initiatives link up and attempt to solve those issues.
We also have handy Modeshift STARS Education Initiatives, and Consultations Guides which we can send to you to help you with these sections.
Step seven: Finish and email the Safer Travel Team to say you've completed your school travel plan
To be completed across week nine.
Once you've completed the above tasks, then please email schooltravelplans@surreycc.gov.uk to let us know that your plan is complete. We will then moderate the plan with the Senior Travel Plan Officer and provide feedback or sign off.
Do not click the submit button in the Accreditation Progress tab until we have checked over it.