Not many people know about Ride Nation. Ride Nation is a national Australian school-based bike education program designed to get more students on bikes.
Ride Nation is pitched to schools as being ‘a fun and interactive learning experience that teaches young people to develop their riding skills and confidence – supporting kids in their independence and giving parents peace of mind.’
Ride Nation is also a wonderful exemplar of a comprehensive and well-thought bike education program that could be implemented more widely, or modified for different contexts.
The focus of Ride Nation is to improve engagement with physical activity and sport with bicycle riding. The aim here is to shift generational beliefs and behaviours from sedentary and inactive to be more active, happier and healthier. By working in schools, Sport Australia is using bike riding programs to reinforce and emphasise a healthy lifestyle, fundamental movement skills, environmental awareness and physical literacy – all of which are important skills for transitioning through life and into adulthood.
This program not only promotes regular and safe use bicycle riding for students, but also have a robust focus on building the skills and professional development of teachers and adults too. For example, they offer Cycling Australia School Teachers (CAST) and Introductory Skills Instructor (ISI) accredited programs.
Ride Nation website has heaps of links for all levels, types and styles of bike riding. There are links to clubs and providers a coaches community and a finder network.
There is also a Ride Nation blog, which is regularly updated stories of local families riding, ideas on where to go and other useful information.
The Ride Nation website has a ‘download zone’ where you can get free resources to get kids started with bike riding, a good load of teacher resources to help extend learnings from the courses, and coach resources to help assist with connecting and delivering these programs. These resources are well worth a look for anyone who has young kids learning to ride.
Ride Nation in-school bike progams develop key skills such as:
Movement and mobility skills
This program is 6 x 1-hour sessions. The focus here is on foundational bike handling skills. Using a game-sense/experience approach students are able to practice: riding in a straight line, riding through a salem course, riding slowly and in control, emergency braking, scanning (looking) left and right, standing and pedalling, and precision braking.
Confidence and hazard perception
This program develops rider situational awareness and response to the moving environment. This program has a mix of classroom content and riding activities so student-riders can understand, identify and respond to different hazards, such as bike control skills, precision maneuvering, signalling, scanning traffic/hazards, hazard perception, and entering roadways.
Exploring places
Where the previous sessions have a focus on road safety and skills, these final two sessions, Explore Places focus on riding opportunities in local communities. The core competencies in this module are: safe route planning and risk assessment, riding in groups, riding of active transportation and riding with other roads users.
I’d love to see Ride Nation being enshrined in the national curriculum of all Australian schools – after all, riding a bike is an essential life skill everyone should learn!
If you haven’t heard of Ride Nation before – check it out.
If you have kids in school or are a teacher – consider getting your school involved.
It is never too early to be safe and confident on a bike!
Happy riding all!
All images from Ride Nation