PUPILS at a primary school have staged a demonstration to raise awareness of road safety.

Parking issues have become increasingly dangerous at St Andrew’s Primary School in Bishop Auckland, and because of the concerns, the pupils have taken direct action.

Youngsters lay in the road on the double yellow lines directly outside their school to send an important safety message to those parents and residents who often park in the area.

Nicola James, headteacher at the school, said: “We’ve had meetings with both residents and parents, and we’ve talked to the children.

“We put regular newsletters out to parents asking everyone to park safely, but the message doesn’t seem to get across, so now we’re using the pupils’ voice to see if they can get the message across.

“At our meetings, we decided to go to the traffic management team to see if we could get more residents parking permits, and we’re looking at putting bollards up because people are parking on the grass and the pavement.

“We’re also getting quite a lot of abuse from parents when we politely ask them to leave or move their cars from the yellow lines, but we’ve got support from the PCSO’s and they’re going to address that as well.

“We aren’t going to tolerate this and we aren’t going to wait for an accident to happen.”

Pupils are also creating road safety posters to display outside the school in order to spread awareness of the issue, and the school is also looking at other solutions.

Scarlett Paterson, Year Four pupil, said: “If a parent was coming, and children were walking across the road and they didn’t see the child and the car just kept on going, the child could get run over and it could cause serious injuries.”

Ian Feldon, PCSO for Durham Constabulary, said: “We’ve got some of the children from the school lying on the school keep clear lines to try and promote road safety outside of our schools’ for the safety of the children.”

Jordan-lee Cliff, Year Five, said: “Today we’re lying on the road because parents are parking on the double yellow lines and they’re not supposed to.”

“That could endanger a child, and a child could get run over.”