Run a challenge

Cooperative climbs and class competitions across your schools, and how to choose between them.

Challenges are run at council level and apply across your schools. Open Challenges from the council navigation.

Challenges do not change what teachers do. They count the journeys already being recorded at the morning roll call.

Choosing the type

You pick one of two competition types, and the choice changes the behaviour you get.

Cooperative climb

"Every class climbs together — no ranking, no winner."

Every active journey moves one shared total further along a route. Classes see collective progress and landmarks reached, not a table of who is ahead.

Choose this when you have schools with very different catchments, when you are early in a rollout, or when a leaderboard would simply confirm that the school nearest the town centre wins. It is also the safer default for mixed primary/secondary networks.

Class competition

"Classes compete — with a leaderboard."

Classes are ranked. A leaderboard appears, and on the classroom board pupils see Class standings this week and their class's position.

Choose this for a short, time-boxed push where you want visible momentum — typically a week or two, not a term.

A leaderboard is very effective and very blunt. Over a long period it discourages the schools that are furthest behind, which are usually the ones the programme most needs to reach.

Creating a challenge

1. Choose New challenge.
2. Enter a Challenge name.
3. Add a Description if you want one. It is optional.
4. Pick the Competition type.
5. Set a Start Date and an End Date.
6. Choose Create.

The challenge shows as Upcoming, then Live, then Ended.

Climb themes

A cooperative climb runs on one of three routes. Every theme is paced to take a reasonably active class about 84 active school days — roughly a term — whichever you pick.

Wild Atlantic Way is the default. Carrauntoohil is a good fit for a shorter half-term push because the ladder has fewer, closer landmarks; Walk to the Moon suits schools who like the scale of the numbers.

Each active journey advances the class by the route's total divided by 84 — so about 30 km per journey on the Wild Atlantic Way, or about 12 m up Carrauntoohil.

What pupils and teachers see

• The classroom board shows the challenge is running — for example "Fresh Air Friday today!" with "Every walk, wheel, cycle and scoot counts".
• In a competition, the board shows the class's rank: "#3 of 24".
• In a climb, classes see shared progress and the next landmark.
• Pupils who win a challenge earn the 🏆 Challenge Winner badge.

Fresh Air Friday and Monthly Hero

These run alongside challenges and need no setup:

• Fresh Air Friday — a weekly prompt on the board.
• Monthly Hero — a pupil badge for 15 active days in one calendar month. The board shows progress, such as "9/15 active days this month", and then "Monthly Hero this month! 🎉".

While a challenge is running

The Challenges page lists each challenge with its state and a leaderboard where one applies. If you see "No data yet for this challenge period", no journeys have been recorded inside the dates — check the start date has actually passed.

How challenges tend to behave

• A challenge only counts journeys recorded while it is running, so schools that hear about it late contribute nothing from their first days.
• Competitions hold attention for about a fortnight.
• A climb and a competition can overlap — a climb for the term with a competition inside it is a common pairing.
• Early in a rollout, results track how quickly each school finished setting up rather than how actively its pupils travelled.

Still stuck? Email our support team.