Fifty Passed, Four Scored 100%, Nobody Got a Badge

Our daughter passed her school cycling course in June. I have emailed the office twice.

The rest of the report reads like a flight log. A talk from the policeman on Thursday 8 October. Bikes in on Monday the 12th. Look behind, signal, a neat and safe start. In and out of the bean-bags without touching them. An emergency stop on the policeman’s shout. Thirty-one boys and nineteen girls, plus one boy who announced at the start that he had already sat the test and passed. Every class has one. In our house it is me, whenever a bicycle comes up.

The Dundee class was part of something big. RoSPA launched the scheme in 1947, and in 1958 it became national at the government’s request, with 100,000 children a year trained.

And then there is the one who didn’t pass. Neil Baker, answering questions for the Museum of Childhood’s 26 Treasures project in 2012, failed at nine. He looked right, left, right before pulling away from the junction, as taught, and then added an extra left. He failed for being over-cautious, and remains “the only person I’ve ever heard of” who missed the little red triangle badge. “The trauma still weighs on me.”

The badge itself survives, at least one of them. The National Trust holds a metal handlebar badge from around 1992, issued by the Midland Federations of Road Safety Committees, which its catalogue thinks was possibly never used on a bicycle, because it is so shiny.

Which brings me to my own test, in 1988, which I have not discussed in public until now. It was not over-caution. Mr Baker, you are no longer the only one. I looked right, and went.