According to an EHU-University of the Basque Country study, many families do not think it is safe for children to walk to school alone, and social awareness is essential if this trend is to be changed

The KideON research group has analysed what prevents many parents from letting their children walk to school alone. The perception of safety was found to be a major factor and is socially constructed, rather than based on actual risks. The researchers say that the key to addressing these fears lies in awareness raising and social perception, and initiatives such as Eskola-bideak (School Pathways) help to increase parents' confidence and promote children's independent mobility.

Children getting to school without adult assistance offers them physical, mental and social benefits. Among other things, it develops their autonomy and mobility capacities, promotes an active lifestyle, increases their knowledge of the environment and helps them to develop skills for relating to it. However, nowadays, in our context, most students in the final years of Primary Education do not go to school alone. Although this reality is the result of many factors (school location, car reliance, lack of time, etc.), research has shown that parents' perceptions of safety are a decisive factor.

So the KideON research group at the EHU-University of the Basque Country carried out a study to gather the views of parents of 6 to 12-year-olds: “We wanted to find out what their perception of safety is and how their fears originate. The majority (62.8%) said that it is not safe for children to walk to school alone in their towns. And from the risks they mentioned, we concluded that social interventions are needed to tackle the feeling of insecurity. Research on this topic has often focused on the design of streets and roads, but it would be more effective and cheaper to address parents' fears and promote initiatives for children to walk to school without adults, rather than making changes to the infrastructure,” explained the researcher Nahia Idoiaga.

The parents taking part in the study highlighted four main risks: poor pedestrian safety, a lack of police presence, roads passing through towns and a lack of street lighting. “We asked them an open-ended question and these ideas were repeated. So we saw that, beyond the individual decision, there is a shared discourse that shapes parents’ sensation of safety. Being collective, however, does not mean it is real. In fact, looking at the data, accidents are anecdotal and walking to school alone is a safe activity for children in the Basque Country. The key is perception, rather than actual safety,” said Idoiaga.

The importance of awareness raising and social initiatives

To counter this perception, the EHU researchers said that the main solution is to make families aware of the benefits of children's independent mobility, and to carry out awareness-raising work. “Many parents believe that accompanying their children to school is the way to protect them and give them the best. And what is more, they often have to juggle various things to manage it. But what needs to be explained to them is that, from a certain age, it's better for children to go to school without an adult. For example, it's something you can start working on little by little with children around the ages of nine or ten and build up gradually. School Pathways and similar schemes are ideal for this,” Idoiaga explained.

School Pathways is a project running in several municipalities in the ACBC (Autonomous Community of the Basque Country), offering an organised way for children to walk to school together in groups. To do this, routes are designed from different areas of the town to the school, and meeting points are established along the way so that the children can gather there and walk together. “We have seen that such initiatives, which require modest public expenditure, do work. A safety net is built and the local community is activated. For example, posters are displayed in shops and elsewhere so that the children know there will be someone there to help if something happens. Safety measures of this type greatly increase the parents' peace of mind,” Idoiaga explained.

Indeed, this was highlighted by some of the parents who took part in the EHU research. Although those who believe that the town is safe for children to walk around alone are in a minority (37%), in their responses they highlighted the fact that the areas crossed by the School Pathways routes are safer.

The researchers pointed out that citizens' perceptions of safety change when they see that strategies for improving safety have been implemented, and so working on a social level has great potential to bring about behavioural changes: “Instead of focusing solely on improving urban planning and infrastructure, interventions will need to consider safety as a socially constructed phenomenon. If changing traffic and street design or improving lighting helps, then so be it. But what we saw is that the human factor is very powerful when one is afraid. Change will come when the perception of risk is addressed, rather than simply installing more street lighting.”

Additional information

Nahia Idoiaga has a PhD in Psychology and lectures on the Degree Course in Early Childhood Education and on the Degree Course in Primary Education at the Faculty of Education - Bilbao as well as on the Master’s Degree in Teacher Training for Compulsory Secondary and Sixth Form Education, Vocational Training and Foreign Language Teaching. She wrote the article together with Naiara Berasategi, Maitane Picaza and Maria Dosil, KideON group members and EHU researchers.

Bibliographic reference

Naiara Berasategi-Sancho, Nahia Idoiaga-Mondragon, Maitane-Picaza Gorrotxategi, Maria Dosil-Santamaria

Families’ perception of safety on school pathways

Cities

DOI: 10.1016/j.cities.2026.107107