At Stephen Freeman Primary School, there is not a great deal of available parking close by.  The roads closest to the school can become very busy at peak times, and we are striving to improve this for our students; by trying to make the roads safer to navigate on the way to and from school, for our neighbours; by reducing the amount of local traffic, and for our whole community; by encouraging an active lifestyle, public transport and walking/scooting/bike riding.

We have a few initiatives which we hope will make the commute to and from school easier.

WOW - the walk to school challenge

Pupils from over 2,000 schools are getting active with WOW - the walk to school challenge. Want safer, cleaner streets and happier, healthier pupils? Join them!   

WOW is a pupil-led initiative where children self-report how they get to school every day using our interactive WOW Travel Tracker. If they travel sustainably at least once a week for a month, they are rewarded with a WOW badge. It's that easy!  We are trying to get onto the Top Ten National Leader board.  Please support us and help promote a healthy and active start to the day for our students.

WOW schools see 59% fewer car journeys to the school gates and 18% more journeys walking and wheeling all the way to school – plus a whole host of other benefits! WOW is available in English and Welsh. 

Park & Stride

In association with Boundary Park, Didcot's premier Sports Club Venue, we now have a Park & Stride Base for our families to use.  Parents are now permitted to park in the Boundary Park designated Car Park, and Stride to school the remaining distance (less than 8 minutes walk around the perimeter of the park).  The car park will be operational for school drop off and/or pick-up from Monday 1st December 2025, meaning that students can walk to school and back and help promote safer, cleaner streets and happier, healthier lives.  Boundary Park

Strider came to visit!

On 13th March we had some very special guests to conduct a local street survey with some of our students.  The children found the afternoon very informative, learning about rumble strips on the dropped kerbs, how to report over-flowing bins in the community, how people with diminished sight or hearing cross at a pelican crossings and learning how to move around safely outside of school; we even learnt the optimal crossing position on a road, which surprisingly can take up to 5 seconds off the crossing time.  The afternoon culminated in an assembly to pass information onto the whole school and a surprise visit from Strider himself!  Zoe Lynch and Amy Peace from Living Streets were so helpful and really encouraged our students to want to walk to school more.