Active School Travel Online Primary School Survey 2026
About the survey
- Active travel means getting around using your own body, including walking, using a wheelchair or scooter, or riding a bike.
- Active Travel England (ATE) has asked the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) to evaluate ways to help children travel actively to school, and this survey is one of the ways we are doing this.
Why take part and what will it involve?
The survey findings will help ATE make walking, wheeling and cycling to school easier and safer for children.
Your school will have sent you a link to a short online survey. You can use this link to answer the questions until 31st August 2026.
- It takes about 10 minutes.
- Taking part is your choice.
- There are no right or wrong answers.
- If you have more than one child at this school, you can complete the survey for each child if you wish to.
The survey will include questions about:
- How your child travels to school
- What you think about changes to help children travel actively
- What helps or makes it hard to walk, wheel or cycle
- We’re donating a £75 voucher to your child’s, to thank your school for taking part.
Why have I been selected to take part?
A representative sample of primary schools in England has been selected based on their proximity to schemes. Not all primary schools are included in the survey. If your child’s school is taking part, the school will have received a letter with guidance on sending the online survey to parents and carers. Parents and carers of pupils in Reception, Year 1, Year 5 and year 6 are invited to complete a short online survey about their child’s travel behaviour and attitudes.
Who is carrying out the survey?
ATE has contracted the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) to lead a team of researchers to carry out the evaluation, including the online survey. Other researchers in the evaluation team are based at Sheffield Hallam University, WPI Economics and Mosodi Ltd.
What will happen to the information I give?
The information collected in this survey will only be used for this evaluation. If you provide your email address, it will only be used to share with you the results of the survey or to invite you to future research by ATE about active school travel.
No pupil, parent/carer, or school will be named or identified in any reports from this survey. Your school will not be able to see your answers.
The information you give will be treated as confidential as directed by the Code of Practice for Statistics. Data collected will be stored on NatCen's and ATE’s secure computer systems in line with UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and Data Protection Act (DPA) 2018. Only the NatCen and ATE research teams will have access to the data in its raw form.
You can read more about how we collect, share, and store data, and how you can withdraw from the evaluation, in the project’s privacy notice and plain English privacy notice.
All data will be stored safely and follow UK data protection law (UK GDPR). NatCen will permanently delete any personal data within 12 months after the final stage of the evaluation project (no later than December 2027). ATE will retain the survey data for 5five years, to allow for comparison over time or follow up questions related to evaluating active school travel interventions. After that, any personal data will be deleted.
Contact us
You can contact NatCen’s research team to ask any questions about the study. Please contact us on: ASTSurvey@natcen.ac.uk or call us for free on 0808 168 1356.