Donal Hickey: Children should get priority at school gates

As life in the classroom has resumed after a long break, there are plans to reduce traffic congestion outside the gates through the use of ‘school zones’

Air pollution outside a north Dublin primary school fell by 20% after a ban on ‘school run’ traffic. Picture: iStock

Children being dropped off at school gates today would surely find it difficult to understand the sort of world depicted in Alice Taylor’s celebrated memoir, To School Through The Fields.

The writer’s experience of growing up on a farm near Newmarket, Co Cork, could be echoed by countless thousands of other people who walked long distances to school. We knew some who trudged four to five miles in all kinds of weather.