AutoData system allows rapid processing of school travel surveys
Travel to and from school has become the focus of a government
initiative aimed at cutting traffic congestion, reducing pollution
and encouraging pupils to take regular exercise by walking or
cycling. Every school is required to produce its own Travel
Plan, and, to speed up this process for the 420 schools in Derbyshire,
the County Council's Road Safety Team is now using an AutoData
forms processing system from Kendata Peripherals.
 Each
school's travel plan is based on the results of a travel survey,
which provides detailed information about how pupils get to
school and back home again. In Derbyshire, the processing and
analysis of the travel survey questionnaires is carried out
centrally by the Road Safety Team.
"We used to enter all the data manually," said Kevin
Senior, School Travel Plan Co-ordinator for Derbyshire County
Council, "but as the work built up, we found that it was
taking too long to get the results back to the schools. So we
decided that some sort of automated data entry would be preferable."
At that time, the Council's Integrated Transport Group Data
Team was already successfully using an AutoData forms processing
system for a variety of traffic monitoring and car park surveys,
and soon the Road Safety Team was put in touch with the system's
supplier - Kendata Peripherals.
A high-speed A3 scanner was duly installed in the Road Safety
Team's office, together with the latest AutoData Scannable Office
forms-processing software. In addition, Kendata took the team's
existing questionnaire and redesigned it for use in the scanner-based
system.
The resultant four-page A4 form features a standard centre spread,
with the front and back pages custom overprinted for each school.
As well as tick boxes, the form includes handprint recognition
fields, free text entry boxes and each school's DfES identification
number as a barcode.
According to Kevin Senior, the printing arrangement with Kendata
works very smoothly: "We just send them the name of the
school and the quantity of forms required, and within two weeks
they arrive."
The forms are then distributed to schools, filled in and returned
to the Road Safety Team for scanning. Information from the forms
is automatically entered into a database, analysed and the results
presented in a way that can be readily understood by schools'
travel-plan working groups, which usually consist of representatives
from governors, staff, parents and pupils.
"About 130 Derbyshire schools already have travel plans
or are going through the process at the moment," added
Kevin Senior. "With the AutoData system, we can now provide
the quickest possible turnaround for schools' travel surveys,
so we are confident that we'll meet the government's target
of having all travel plans in place by 2010."
Contact details for publication:
Tel: +44 (0)23 8086 9922 Fax: +44 (0)23 8086 0800
Web: www.kendata.com
e-mail: sales@kendata.com
Further editorial information from:
Ken Fletcher, Kendata Peripherals Ltd
Tel: +44 (0)23 8086 9922 Fax: +44 (0)23 8086 0800
e-mail: kenf@kenda.co.uk
17th August 2005 Ref. KE204A
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