Star rating for schools system makes schools safer across Latin America

September 9, 2019 by Child Health Initiative

Categories: Road Safety Tags: Child health, Fundacion Gonzalo Rodriguez, iRAP, Star Rating for Schools

Star Rating for Schools App is being used by GRF across their projects.

Road markings improve safety during children’s journeys to and from school.

New signage installed outside schools in Municipality of Guaymallén, Argentina.

Every child has the right to be safe on its street.

Schools in Uruguay, Argentina and Chile are being made safer thanks to FIA Foundation partner Gonzalo Rodriguez Foundation using the Star Rating for Schools (SR4S) mobile app to assess and reduce the risk children are exposed to on their journey to and from school.

The SR4S system has now been used to assess infrastructure around 53 schools in the region – ranking each school between one and five stars for its safety credentials.

FGR began using SR4S as a part of the Latin American ’Children Safe in Traffic’ programme and were trained by the iRAP team in 2017. Since then more than 90 schools across three countries has made the journey to and from school safer for thousands of children and adolescents.

In the Municipality of Guaymallén, Argentina, six schools were assessed with the SR4S app during the first phase of the project, and following the implementation of safer infrastructure five of those schools received five-star ratings, the highest possible score. Taking learnings from these projects, the municipality’s government has embraced the project and has gone on to improve 74 schools and is planning to work in at least 120 more. You can watch the video here.

Elsewhere in Argentina, six schools have been assessed in Neuquén City and Corrientes City respectively. Across Uruguay, two schools were assessed and improved in La Paz (watch the video of School Nº 107 in Spanish here) and in Las Piedra, five further schools were assessed and are now being improved.

María Fernanda Rodríguez, President of Fundación Gonzalo Rodríguez, said: "We want to assure the safe and healthy mobility of children in Latin American region. In order to reduce number of serious injuries and deaths resulting from traffic accidents, we saw the need to expand our work throughout the region, working togehter with the FIA Foundation, other partners, NGOs and local governments, to make our programs more sustainable and impactful"

Programmes Manager for the FIA Foundation, Aggie Krasnolucka-Hickman, said: “Evidence-based programming is at the heart of the FIA Foundation’s grant-making process. Partnerships and collaborative work, like the one between the Foundation’s long-term partners iRAP and FGR play a critical role in facilitating knowledge exchange and local capacity building. That impact is reflected in the success like in Guaymallén where assessments before and after changes have demonstrated impact which the local administration has taken forward to improve more schools beyond the scope of our project.”