WoW - Walk Once a Week

WoW encourages parents and pupils to walk to school at least once a week.

The scheme was developed as a way of enabling schools and local authorities to promote walking to school on a regular basis throughout the entire school year
'WoW' is a simple and flexible scheme which can greatly reduce the number of children who are driven to school regularly and increase the amount of physical activity children take in their every day lives. The scheme asks schools to pledge to be a ‘WoW School’. A ‘WoW School’ is one that agrees to promote walking to and from school as the preferred travel choice on a regular basis.

WoW Step By Step Booklet

Download our step by step guide to WoW (thanks to TfL for supporting the leaflet).

The great thing about ‘WoW’ is its flexibility. A school can decide how they want to run their program from a range of different options: .
‘WoW: Walk on Wednesday’… …Every Wednesday
With this scheme, a walk will be expected to promote walking to school to parents and pupils on Wednesdays. The most effective schemes encourage parents and pupils to walk to and from school every Wednesday in every week of the school year. At the end of every month, the pupils who have walked to school every Wednesday in that month will receive a reward for doing so. At the end of the school year, ‘WoW Schools’ will also receive a reward for their commitment to the scheme.
…Whenever Possible
It is possible that some schools may find it difficult to promote walking to and from school every Wednesday. In response, the scheme can be adapted to suit an individual school’s needs with the regularity of the promotion changing. A school may for instance, decide to promote walking to and from school one Wednesday every term, every month or every fortnight. Where this is the case, the reward system should vary too. For example, pupils could receive badges at the end of every term or school year.

Promoting ‘WoW’ ‘Whenever Possible’ means that schools will not achieve such of a significant increase in the number of pupils walking to school as regularly. It is recommended that ‘WoW: Whenever Possible’ should be used as a starting point to promoting walking to and from school every Wednesday of the school year.
'Walk Once a Week’
For some schools Wednesdays may not be the most appropriate day of the week to promote walking to and from school.
Schools choose ‘WoW Days’
The “Walk Once a Week: WoW” scheme works by rewarding pupils in exactly the same way – every child who has walked to and from school at least once a week for an entire month will be rewarded. ‘Walk Once a Week’ allows a school to set a more appropriate day to promote walking, Fridays for example.
Parents and pupils choose ‘WoW Days’
Walk Once a Week also allows a school to reward pupils who walk to and from school one day a week and leave the parent and pupil to chose which day suits them best. It is worth considering that this option of the scheme will require more monitoring than any other option. A school would need to know who walked to school every day of the year to ensure that the rewards are given out fairly.