September 22, 2023

Two schools in Westmorland and Furness have enjoyed a unique scooter skills experience day as a prize for being crowned champions in the Cumbria Schools Street Tag competition.

ScootFit, a professional scooting company visited Yarlside Academy in Barrow-in-Furness and St Oswald’s CofE Primary School in Burneside to deliver a whole school session to encourage children to be confident and competent at scooting.

In the Cumbria school’s Street Tag competition, Yarlside Academy were crowned premier leader board large school champions with a staggering 67,584 tags collected and 33,379 miles travelled. And St Oswald’s CofE Primary School topped the premier leader board as small school champions with 27,207 tags collected and 21,249 miles travelled.

Street Tag is a mobile app that turns the world around the user into a virtual playground and is a fun, interactive way to be physically active. Points are gained by actively travelling to and from places, in addition to scanning virtual tags that have been scattered throughout the community.  Tags can be found on the route to school, in local parks, at local events and more or less anywhere and everywhere.

The latest data for the Street Tag programme shows that 5,994 players from 123 schools from across all parts of Cumbria used the virtual app to keep physically active between January 2022 and June 2023.

Collectively players walked 1,500,000,000 steps, travelled 1,785,370 miles and collected 2,867,168 tags. 

The data also shows that 70 per cent of Street Tag players in Cumbria do not take part in any other sport, fitness or dance activities with the virtual app being their go to choice for keeping active as part of their everyday life. And that 73 per cent of players are now walking 5 days a week or more, an increase of 7 per cent. 

Street Tag is a great incentive to encourage families to choose active travel such as walking, wheeling or cycling to and from school.  With support from Cumberland Council, Westmorland and Furness Council and New Balance a licence for Street Tag has been purchased by Active Cumbria and schools are invited to sign up for free.

Schools collect points as a team and can monitor their achievements and scores against other schools in the county, with certificates and prizes awarded to top performing schools for each season. 

Oliver Carswell Active Cumbria Development Officer and Street Tag Programme Lead, said: “This new data shows how Street Tag is helping to improve the lives of people in communities across Cumbria, providing new incentives to move more on a daily basis. 

“It’s particularly encouraging to see that 10 per cent of players have moved from participating in limited activity to being classes as active.  The Street Tag app by provides an easy, fun and interactive way to keep active.”

Mrs Cook from Yarlside Academy said: “The children, staff, parents and the wider community really enjoyed the latest Street Tag challenge and threw themselves into it with vigour. 

“We promoted the challenge over social media and through school assemblies as we really wanted to win the scooter experience. The children absolutely loved the day”.

Season 8 of Street Tag starts 4^th October 2023 and schools interested in signing up can contact Oliver Carswell at Active Cumbria by e-mail to oliver.carswell@cumbria.gov.uk