More than 200 Highland youngsters will be new junior road safety officers for their schools.
The P6 and 7 pupils from 47 local primary schools gathered at the Culduthel Christian Centre in Inverness yesterday to be trained in their new roles.
The Junior Road Safety Officer (JRSO) programme in Scotland puts children in control of highlighting issues within their own school and it gives senior primary pupils the opportunity to become JRSOs for a year.
Their tasks will include organising a road safety noticeboard, delivering safety presentations to classes or assemblies and running school road safety competitions.
At the training day, organised by Highland Council’s road safety team, the new JRSOs were provided with information from a number of organisations to help them undertake their roles within their schools.
The council also provided information on the ‘Go for it’ scheme and how to create a noticeboard and run competitions
Road Safety Scotland informed the new JRSOs about their website promotion www.jrso.com which includes a ‘members only’ area specifically for them and Cycling Scotland promoted its ‘Bikeability’ scheme.
The youngsters also received valuable information from HITRANS staff on active and sustainable travel while Breedon Aggregates spoke about HGV blind spot safety for cyclists.
Highland Council’s depute leader, Alasdair Christie, said: “This important training day is ultimately about saving lives. The vital JRSO role empowers them within their schools not only to share road safety education information with their fellow pupils, but also to encourage them to think about and use sustainable travel choices on the school journey, with the aim of having a safe and healthy Highland school population.”
