EasyPeez
Veteran
- Location
- Cottingham, East Yorkshire
My daughter has recently done the Bikeability (née Cycling Proficiency) training at school. She passed L1 but failed L2 and it's left her quite upset and definitely depleted her confidence. According to her account, the tutor was quite poor at explaining what she expected from the children and shut down any attempt at discussion about why a certain decision (around giving way etc) was right or wrong.
Of course, I wasn't there so don't know how fair an assessment of the tutor's attitude and ability this is, and I appreciate that often children (and adults) will see themselves as having been wronged whenever they face failure or criticism. That said, I feel sure that if I had been there that over the allotted 2 days I would have been able to guide my daughter to a level where she would have passed the second stage, as I know from our rides together how good her bike handling skills are and how well she listens and responds.
It's come at a bad time as we had just started to venture out onto local roads together at weekends. Just last weekend we had a lovely 7 mile ride to the swimming baths and back, marred only by some plank blasting his horn right behind us, which terrified her. He was beeping at another car but my daughter thought it was aimed at us and was rather shaken up. That, plus now the the partial Bikeability failure, has put her off riding on roads altogether at present.
On the positive side, I think it's great that cycling skills are being embedded into school education again, and children encouraged to cycle to school. And some of the free booklets that came with the course have been quite fun for us to complete together and have improved her knowledge of road signs, bike parts etc.
Another thought I did have is that it would be useful if all parents/carers whose children were doing Bikeability could be issued a booklet several weeks beforehand with pictures and info about road positioning in different circumstances, the exact expectations around signalling (one of the reasons my daughter failed L2 was for checking behind her while signalling - I do this all the time and had totally forgotten about the test expecting you to have both hands on the bars whenever looking behind. Silly of me I guess, but reminders of this kind of detail would have allowed us to practice such things together n the run up to the course), highway code info relating to cars and cycles overtaking each other (minimum distances etc - this could be useful to parents who drive in terms of making them more aware about local children who are just starting to use roads and about considerate driving around cyclists generally).
Anyway, I've blathered on long enough. I'd be interested to hear other parents' experiences of Bikeability, positive and negative, how it's affected your child's cycling enthusiasm and/or skill level, ideas for improvements/additions etc. Anyone involved in designing or teaching the course that can offer any insights too maybe?
Cheers,
Andy
Of course, I wasn't there so don't know how fair an assessment of the tutor's attitude and ability this is, and I appreciate that often children (and adults) will see themselves as having been wronged whenever they face failure or criticism. That said, I feel sure that if I had been there that over the allotted 2 days I would have been able to guide my daughter to a level where she would have passed the second stage, as I know from our rides together how good her bike handling skills are and how well she listens and responds.
It's come at a bad time as we had just started to venture out onto local roads together at weekends. Just last weekend we had a lovely 7 mile ride to the swimming baths and back, marred only by some plank blasting his horn right behind us, which terrified her. He was beeping at another car but my daughter thought it was aimed at us and was rather shaken up. That, plus now the the partial Bikeability failure, has put her off riding on roads altogether at present.
On the positive side, I think it's great that cycling skills are being embedded into school education again, and children encouraged to cycle to school. And some of the free booklets that came with the course have been quite fun for us to complete together and have improved her knowledge of road signs, bike parts etc.
Another thought I did have is that it would be useful if all parents/carers whose children were doing Bikeability could be issued a booklet several weeks beforehand with pictures and info about road positioning in different circumstances, the exact expectations around signalling (one of the reasons my daughter failed L2 was for checking behind her while signalling - I do this all the time and had totally forgotten about the test expecting you to have both hands on the bars whenever looking behind. Silly of me I guess, but reminders of this kind of detail would have allowed us to practice such things together n the run up to the course), highway code info relating to cars and cycles overtaking each other (minimum distances etc - this could be useful to parents who drive in terms of making them more aware about local children who are just starting to use roads and about considerate driving around cyclists generally).
Anyway, I've blathered on long enough. I'd be interested to hear other parents' experiences of Bikeability, positive and negative, how it's affected your child's cycling enthusiasm and/or skill level, ideas for improvements/additions etc. Anyone involved in designing or teaching the course that can offer any insights too maybe?
Cheers,
Andy
. KISS!
