If you work in a school, run a travel plan, or plan active travel for a local authority, you've probably heard that the government has published a new plan called Worth Every Step. Here's what's actually in it, what it means for the school run and your community, and how to turn it into action.
First, what is it?
Two documents landed together in June 2026:
- CWIS3 — the government's third Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy. This is the national strategy: the vision, the targets, and £4.555 billion of investment to 2030.
- Worth Every Step — Active Travel England's delivery plan for making CWIS3 happen. This is the "how", year by year, to 2030.
Think of CWIS3 as the destination and Worth Every Step as the route.
The key headline for schools
School travel is right at the top of the agenda for this first delivery period. Not a strand, not a nice-to-have, the top of the list!
The government wants 60% of children aged 5 to 16 to usually walk, wheel or cycle to school by 2035, up from 46% today. To get there, Active Travel England (ATE) has committed to:
- a new national safe routes to school programme - including 5,000 new routes to schools and 10,000 new simple side-road zebra crossings
- 3,500 miles of safer routes to schools and public transport hubs, delivered with mayoral teams
- a school support package that explicitly includes cycle training and incentive programmes
- continued Bikeability funding, plus support for authorities to build an active travel to school programme
- £135 million of revenue funding to train children to walk, wheel and cycle, help people start cycling or ride again, and help schools develop travel plans
Why the urgency? In 2024, one in ten school journeys under a mile were still made by car - rising to over half for one-to-two-mile trips. That's a lot of short journeys that could be active, and a lot of peak-time traffic outside the school gates.
The benchmark everyone will be citing is Kesgrave High School in Suffolk, where around 86% of 1,800 students walk or cycle - about 18,000 active trips a week.
ATE's own maths: if just 1,000 schools matched it, 400,000 more children would be active and there'd be 160 million fewer car journeys a year.
What it means for communities
The plan is deliberately built around everyday local life, not just the school gate:
- Cost of living - A family giving up a second car could save around £1,700 a year - roughly £17,000 over a decade.
- Health - Hitting the targets could mean 1.7 million fewer GP appointments and 4.4 million fewer sick days a year, and a 30% lower risk of depression for people who are active.
- High streets - People who walk and wheel to the shops visit more often and spend more - active, people-friendly streets support local businesses.
- Safety, especially for women and girls - With 9 in 10 women reporting feeling unsafe walking alone after dark, ATE is publishing new guidance on women's and girls' walking safety, and tackling barriers like pavement parking.
The change that matters most (and is easy to miss)
Buried in the delivery plan is the shift that changes everything for schools and travel teams: behaviour change is now something ATE measures and reports on.
One of ATE's first "leading indicators" is participation in active travel behaviour change activities — authorities will be asked to report how many people they've engaged in programmes that shift travel towards walking, wheeling and cycling. That data feeds into Capability Ratings, which in turn inform multi-year funding.
Example of Love to Ride Schools leaderboard
In plain terms: building the route is only half the job. The plan is explicit that behaviour change programmes work best alongside good infrastructure — and now the participation counts. Getting families to actually use the safe route, and being able to show it, is what the system is now asking for.
That's exactly what Love to Ride does.
Our Schools Impact Calculator give an indication of the trips, carbon saved and health value you could unlock.
Where Love to Ride Schools fits
Worth Every Step gives you the routes, the crossings and the training. Love to Ride Schools is the activation and evidence layer that sits on top - the bit that turns new infrastructure into changed habits, and changed habits into numbers you can report.
We help get families active. Our challenges, rewards and friendly competition are built to move people who don't yet travel actively - which is the whole point of the 46%-to-60% shift.
Example of Love to Ride Schools Reporting
We give you the evidence. Every ride, new rider and mode-shift figure is captured, so you have the participation data schools need for travel plans and authorities need for funding conversations. We can help you baseline your norms and then stimulate change?
Example of Love to Ride Schools Reporting
We help make communities safer for active travel. Safe routes to school only work if people trust them. Our Rate My Routes feature and community Safety Maps capture what riders actually experience on the ground - invaluable for spotting the gaps, and directly relevant to the women's and girls' safety agenda in the plan. Whilst this feature is aimed at adults, we've a new innovation available for schools...
New: Schoolways school travel intelligence platform
Worth Every Step also puts real weight on mapping and planning - a national digital network by 2030, and a strong push on designing school journeys well from the start.
Example of Love to Ride Schoolways surveying
That's why we've built Schoolways, our new school travel planning proposition. It helps schools and authorities understand how pupils travel today, map and plan safer routes to the gate, and evidence change over time — bringing planning, monitoring and measurement into one place.
Example of Love to Ride Schoolways Route Rating
For the professionals
If you're an active travel officer, school travel planner or work in a combined authority, the plan asks you to do more with data - map networks, monitor schemes, and measure what works. That's core to what we do beyond the school gate.
Our platform for planners shows how Love to Ride supports mapping, monitoring and measurement at scale — the same disciplines Worth Every Step is now built around, from route insight through to participation and mode-shift reporting.
Where to start
You don't need to wait for the 5,000th route to be built. The schools already pulling ahead are the ones pairing infrastructure with activation now.
- See the numbers your school could achieve with the Schools Impact Calculator
- Understand your routes with Rate My Routes and Safety Maps
- Talk to us about Schoolways and how we help you plan, deliver and evidence a more active school run.
Every step really is worth it - and we can help schools count them.