Unlike councils, schools, of course, have no direct control over parking arrangements outside the school grounds, often limiting themselves to writing to parents asking for considerate behaviour when dropping off and picking up children.
However, unless the school publicly and visibly practices good travel management itself, and also actively involves its children in the process, it cannot really expect that parents will pay much attention to its requests.
Recently, many councils have begun to promote "car exclusion zones" around schools. Typically, parents are encouraged to park no nearer than quarter of a mile (400 metres) or more from the school, with journeys completed on foot. This scheme depends on schools' active participation - by rewarding children/parents in some way for their thoughtfulness - in addition to passive letter-writing.
A particularly good example of a council scheme based on exclusion zones of this sort is Southend, where 22 primary schools have been taking part in the 'Ziggy Campaign'. The statistics show that the number of normal car trips to two of the schools has increased in the last three years, but has dropped in 20 schools. Averaging over all 22 schools, the proportion of trips to school which are made by car has dropped from about 46% to about 32% in those three years.
