No easy solutions to school traffic issues

The desire to keep our children safe is pretty much the most basic human instinct there is.

So it is little wonder that parents across Rutherglen and Cambuslang are so keen to make the areas around schools safer, especially when vehicles are involved.

It seems to be a recurring theme, too many cars and too many selfish drivers who pay little or no attention to what is going on around them.

Burnside, Burgh, St Anthony’s, Loch, Calderwood, St Charles’ and West Coats come instantly to mind when I think of stories I myself have worked on over the years.

We have already seen children struck by cars at the likes of Cairns and St Columbkille’s, so it is only natural that parents think a pupil will need to be killed before real change is attempted.

There is no easy fix to this problem. Many of our schools are already under pressure when it comes to school rolls and there is simply more traffic on the roads.

So it is encouraging to see South Lanarkshire Council considering extreme solutions such as traffic regulation orders to ban parking too close to schools.

Turn to pages four and five for our special report on the issue.

Elsewhere this week we celebrate the achievements of pupils at Cathkin High with a full run down of their upper school awards ceremony on pages 20 and 21.

And in the middle of the paper is our final pull-out of primary one pictures.

We hope you have enjoyed the feature over the past few weeks. It has been an honour to help capture the most exciting of days in the lives of local schoolchildren and we cannot wait to do the same next year.