Fewer than four in 10 New Zealand children walk, bike or scoot to school. Christchurch City Council’s Walk or Wheel to School Week, which runs from Monday 2 to Friday 6 November 2026, asks schools to change that for five days.
The week asks children and their families to walk, cycle, scoot or skate to school. Schools can join for a single day or the whole week, and the council says either is welcome.
How schools take part
Walk or Wheel to School Week is part of the council’s Good-to-Go school travel programme. Schools register on the council’s Walk or Wheel page with their name, address, contact person, phone, email and roll size. The same page has a printable poster and a student certificate to download.
Good-to-Go asks something of the schools that sign up. Primary and intermediate schools agree to join Walk or Wheel to School Week, receive the programme’s newsletters, and take part in and hand out the annual Good-to-Go School Travel Survey. Secondary schools commit to a road safety or active travel promotion instead, along with the newsletters and the survey.
In return, the council’s school travel team offers tailored advice, free workshops at the school and free Scooter Skills training for Year 3 students. The council links the programme to road safety, hauora and its target of net zero carbon emissions by 2045. Questions go to SchoolTravel@ccc.govt.nz.
What the numbers show
The most recent national figure comes from the New Zealand Health Survey. Environmental Health Intelligence NZ (EHINZ), a Massey University unit that tracks environmental health data, analysed it in a February 2026 report.
Between July 2024 and June 2025, 38.6% of children aged 5 to 14 usually travelled to and from school by walking, cycling or another physically active mode. That’s about 261,000 children.
EHINZ says the figure has sat below 40% for each of the past three years. Older children were more likely to travel actively, with 42.1% of 10 to 14-year-olds doing so against 34.9% of 5 to 9-year-olds. The report found no significant gap between boys and girls, between ethnic groups, between deprivation groups or between health regions.
The longer view comes from the Ministry of Transport’s Household Travel Survey, which EHINZ reported in 2019. In 1989/90, 42% of 5 to 12-year-olds walked to school and 12% biked.
By 2010 to 2014, walking had fallen to 29% and cycling to 2%. Over the same years, the share of children travelling to school as car passengers rose from 31% to 55%.
Sport New Zealand’s Active NZ survey found 59% of tamariki aged 5 to 11 met the recommended activity levels in 2024/25. EHINZ calls walking or biking to school an effective way for children to get some physical activity each day. It also notes active travel cuts air pollution, noise and greenhouse gas.
Running it outside Christchurch
The week is a Christchurch programme, but similar schemes run elsewhere. Greater Wellington Regional Council runs Movin’March, a month of walking, scooting and biking to school each March. It’s free for schools and ideally suited to Years 0 to 8.
The council says more than a hundred schools came back for the 2026 event, some after taking part for more than 15 years, and it’s working through school feedback ahead of 2027.
Greater Wellington’s Kura Kete site holds curriculum-linked lessons on the benefits of active travel, written by teachers. It includes Te Haerenga o ngā Tamariki, an online tool that lets students collect data on their own trips.
In Auckland, the Travelwise Schools Programme has supported schools since 2005. It covers walking school buses, a walking or wheeling strand called WoW, and curriculum-linked units for Years 5 and 6 (Ready Steady Go!) and Years 7 and 8 (On the Go!). Auckland Transport’s page says the programme is now managed by Auckland Council.
For a school outside these areas, the local council’s road safety or school travel team is the first call. A week like this also gives a school its own baseline. Counting how ākonga arrive on a normal Monday, then again during the week, gives the board a before and after.
