May update

A message for instructors from Emily

It has a busy couple of months, with the end of year and deadlines for your Instructor renewals and Recognised Prior Learning (RPL) to be completed. I have been impressed by the commitment of instructors who have completed their RPL or booked onto a course before the deadline.

Recognised prior learning and renewals

We firmly believe that ensuring our training is up to date and consistent, not just across our industry but with other similar roles, that we can offer the best possible Bikeability training to all our riders. Without your dedication to keep delivering we wouldn’t be able to meet the targets set and show how every child can get Bikeability. Thank you to everyone who completed your renewal and registered for RPL – with all of working together we will be able to keep demonstrating that cycling is a vital life skill every child should have access to!

The future of Bikeability – our strategy

There are lots of exciting things coming up for the months and years ahead of us. Although there is still political uncertainty, there is still an appetite for cycling training and active travel only gets more important as time goes on. With that in mind we have run a number of workshops on the future of Bikeability and planning our strategy to 2035. We have had lots of great feedback from industry, including instructors, both at the conference in March and through online meetings.

Thank you to everyone who got involved, spared your valuable time and made lots of great points, giving us plenty to consider. I was especially heartened by the amount of enthusiasm in our industry to go for the most ambitious option! Hopefully our shared vision will be realised and we’ll see Bikeability conquering the world and getting everyone out on their cycles!

Scaling up and delivery figures

As we move into a new financial year, Active Travel England and DfT Ministers are really increasing the amount of scrunity towards the targets we have set. We’ll shortly be publishing delivery figures for 2023/24, which once again, due to your commitment we have delivered record levels of training towards the ‘every child’ target. But we must keep increasing, and in some areas we know the scale up challenge is significant. We need all instructors on board to reach even more children so we dont lose funding this year or future years. The Trust has secured the record funding, now its down to you to deliver to every child. Lets get out there and change more children and families cycling experience and get everyone pedalling with confidence.”

Thank you, as always, for your commitment and vision. We are looking forward to 2025 and beyond!