School patrol video: ‘I just like keeping my friends safe’

Road safety week is on now. Take a couple of minutes to share this new video celebrating the work of school patrol students.

From service to their mates to earning a hot cuppa, students who volunteer on a school patrol explain their mahi in the above video.

We’re releasing this clip during Road Safety Week to celebrate and acknowledge the many hours of volunteer work contributed every year by young volunteers at schools all around Aotearoa. It’s a sentiment shared by the New Zealand Police and the AA.

Every year, thousands of students sign up and receive police training to work on pedestrian crossings and kea crossings to help their peers cross the street safely to and from school. Others serve as bus wardens, especially in rural areas.

It’s a big job, but a rewarding one.

And if you’re curious about how school patrols came about, we’ve previously dug into the archives to find the answers:

New Zealand’s school patrols: some history

A Transport Department booklet from the 1940s had this to say about school patrols:

"The underlying purpose of school patrols is to facilitate the safe, orderly, and expeditious crossing of the street by pupils on their way to and from school, and at the same time to create a minimum of delay to motor and other traffic passing along the street."

That booklet has been updated ever since and is now the School Traffic Safety Teams Manual.

Here it is today:

School Traffic Safety Teams

Finally, we suggest that teachers hand out chocolate fish alongside those cups of Milo this week. The school patrol kids deserve our collective thanks.