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  • HomeRun Team
    • Jan 12, 2021

“We opened during the pandemic. HomeRun helped create a community and reduce car use.”

Q&A with Sasha Owen, the head of King’s Gate, a free primary school in Wiltshire. The school adopted HomeRun when it first opened in 2019.


Tell us about your school

We are a free school, and we opened in September of 2019. We're on a big housing development, which is still being built, eight miles north of Salisbury. Our catchment is predominantly here on the estate, but because it was a lot smaller when we opened we were able to take children out of catchment. Since then we have cut single family car use by 43%.

There are two schools within the estate and we do get lots of traffic, so we had to put lots of plans in place. Parents are encouraged to walk, scoot or cycle, and, as a very last resort, we have a ‘park and stride’ facility in the local cricket pavilion car park. Image: The opening King's Gate Primary School in Amesbury. Photo by Tom Gregory.



What made you choose HomeRun?

When the school opened in 2019, we knew we’d want to limit the amount of families driving to the school, and so were keen to meet HomeRun when we were invited to attend their presentation.


We also wanted to develop a really strong sense of community from the very first day of opening our doors, and it was explained to us that not only could it be a journey sharing app and encourage the teachers and parents to to walk as much as they could, but it would also enable us to develop those strong community links.


 

“We have cut single family car use by 43%, since we opened three years ago.” Sasha Owen, Headteacher
 


How do you get people to join?

We have a welcome pack for families starting the school, with a HomeRun registration, so every parent is encouraged to join from the very beginning.





How do you use it?

Predominantly as a communication platform. What we like about it is it’s a closed, safe environment where we can share information with our parents. But equally our parents can put information up there too, and message each other to arrange journey shares. All the other parent sees is that they've got a child in a particular year group, and if they live locally.




What’s the best thing about it?

It’s enabled us to develop a strong community ethos across the school. We started off using HomeRun infrequently, but the parents really like it, because it’s a quick, easy way to share information. Now, an awful lot of our communication is across it.



What advice would you give to other schools?

Use it with fidelity. Once you've got a platform that works, your parents get used to it and understand it, whereas if you have various different platforms, it can be a bit bitty. Parents like the consistency and familiarity.

 
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