On Thursday afternoon I visited Forthill Primary School with members of the School Parking and Pupil Safety Working Group. This included officers from Tayside Police, council staff from Transportation, Education and Travel Active and Councillors like me.
For about 25 minutes there was a lot of comings and goings including several hundred vehicle movements. There was also a significant number of parents and carers on foot rather than driving right up to the door in their cars. The potentially most dangerous manoeuvres I observed involved cars reversing close to where children were also crossing the school road.
While the issues associated with dropping off and collecting children at Forthill Primary School are well known to me, it was important that all the other members of this group observe the potential dangers to children from the traffic congestion in the vicinity of the school at the end of the school day. It was I think significant that this was the first visit of the working group, which demonstrates the priority being given to systematically investigating and improving arrangements for picking and and dropping off children at Forthill. The working group have four further visits to Primary Schools in other parts of Dundee next week before we move onto devising some solutions.
The School Parking and Pupil Safety Working Group was set up by the Education Committee on Monday 27 February and the group is chaired by the Chief Executive.
