Read your dashboards

What each figure on the school, cluster and council dashboards actually counts — and what it does not.

There are three dashboards, reached from the School, Cluster and Council tabs. Each shows the same underlying journeys at a different scope. A fourth tab, Reports, is different: it measures how far the programme has rolled out rather than how pupils travel. See the Usage Report.

This page sets out precisely what each number counts, since these figures tend to end up in programme reports.

The most important definition

"Active travel" here means every mode except Car.

This is a broad definition. It is a "did not arrive in a private car alone" measure, not a "walked, wheeled or cycled" measure. If your programme reports on walking, wheeling and cycling specifically, take those from the mode mix, which breaks out every mode separately — do not use the headline active-travel rate for it.

The headline rate is easily misread: "78% travelled actively" tends to be taken as "78% walked, wheeled or cycled" unless the broader definition is given alongside it.

The denominator

Rates are calculated over journeys recorded, not over pupils enrolled. A pupil who was not checked in is not counted at all, in either the numerator or the denominator.

That matters at the start of a rollout. A school where one enthusiastic class checks in and the rest do not will show a high active-travel rate on a small base. Read the rate together with Checked in today — the "{n} of {total} students checked in" figure — which tells you how much of the school the rate is actually built on.

School dashboard

The school dashboard is also the Staffroom dashboard — it is the one to put on a screen in a staff room.

Cluster dashboard

Aggregates the schools in one cluster:

• Students enrolled, Active travel, Best school, Schools above 70%, and Car-only journeys.
• School league — schools ranked by active-travel rate.
• Cluster mode mix, and Active travel · by week.

Only schools in the cluster appear. A school can be in several clusters, so the same school can show in more than one league table.

A school in no cluster shows on the council dashboard but in no league table at all. A school added without a cluster starts that way, so if one is missing from a league, check its clusters first.

Council dashboard

Covers every participating school:

• The headline: "{pct}% of {council} pupils travel to school actively."
• Progress to 2030 active-travel target, showing current against target.
• How {council} travels — the council-wide mode mix.
• Active travel · across the school year.
• Carbon impact · to date, in tonnes.
• Leading schools, by active-travel rate.
• Primary vs. secondary.
• A map of schools.

The 2030 target

The target is a figure your council sets — it is a programme goal, not something Active Travel Logger calculates or validates. The progress bar compares your current rate against it.

The map

Only schools with a map location appear as a pin. If a school is missing, its coordinates have not been set — the dashboard says "Add coordinates to schools to plot them here". A School Administrator or council admin sets this on the school's page. A school with no pin still counts in every figure.

Usage Report

The Reports tab opens the Usage Report. It answers a different question from the dashboards above: not "how do pupils travel?" but "who is using Active Travel Logger, is that growing, and who should we follow up with?". It is open to Council Administrators and Council Viewers; school staff do not see the tab.

It follows the time range at the top of the page, which starts on the last 30 days. A school or class counts as checking in if it recorded at least one journey in that range.

Growth

The first three show a ▲ or ▼ change against the previous range of the same length — so a 30-day range is compared with the 30 days before it. Under the first two, a line such as "{n} of {total} schools have ever checked in" shows how far the rollout has got overall.

Growth, week by week charts Classes checking in, Schools checking in and Check-ins for each week in the range. Hover over a bar for the exact week and value. A flat or falling line in the school and class charts is the early sign of a rollout that has stalled, which the check-ins chart alone can hide.

Who to follow up with

Schools to introduce or chase lists every school with no check-ins in the range, grouped by how far it has got:

Each school shows when it was added, how many classes it has, or when it last checked in.

Classes to chase lists every class with no check-ins in the range, with its school, pupil count and last check-in (Never if it has none). Use the school filter to prepare a call or email to one school; the list shows the first 15 classes and a button for the rest.

School by school is the full table: classes active out of classes, pupils, check-ins, days with check-ins, and last check-in.

What the Usage Report counts

• Classes and pupils are those on the current academic year's roster. Classes from a previous year are not counted, so a school is not penalised for last year's retired classes.
• A pupil on a roster who has not been checked in still counts in the total; the report shows how many classes are active, not how many pupils travel actively.
• Last check-in looks at all time, not just the range, so a school that went quiet before the range still shows when it was last heard from.

Derived figures — what they are built on

CO₂ saved, Km walked / wheeled and Km cycled are modelled estimates, not measurements. The dashboards show an ⓘ button beside them that summarises the arithmetic below.

The calculation

Each active journey is therefore worth 0.34 kg of CO₂ (2 km × 0.17 kg). For example, 100 active journeys gives 100 × 2 km × 0.17 kg = 34 kg of CO₂ saved, and 100 cycling journeys gives 200 km cycled. CO₂ is rounded to 0.1 kg and km to the nearest whole number. The council dashboard shows the year's total in tonnes.

Where the numbers come from

Replace the 2 km with a measured figure if you hold one (for example from pupil home-to-school distances).

What the figures cannot tell you

1. No actual distance is measured. The system stores no addresses and no routes, so a school with a tight catchment and one with a wide rural catchment are counted identically.
2. Every non-car journey is credited with the full saving, including bus, train and car-share. Only about 55% of Irish primary pupils travel by car (CSO Census 2022), so some logged journeys never replaced a car trip, and public transport is not zero-emission. Read the CO₂ total as an upper estimate.
3. The factor changed on 22 October 2026. Earlier versions used 0.21 kg per km (0.42 kg per journey), which none of the sources above support. CO₂ figures reported before that date are about 24% higher than the same journeys would give now, so do not compare them directly.

The school dashboard's "≈ a year's work for N trees" line divides CO₂ saved by 21 kg per tree per year. It is an illustration only.

Describe these as modelled estimates using a 2 km average journey: that is what the underlying data supports.

Time periods

The period selector offers Today, This week, Term and School year. Figures labelled · term or · year follow the academic year, not the calendar year.

Exporting

Every dashboard offers Export CSV and Export Excel for the period on screen. For scheduled or automated extracts, see export and the API.

Why a figure might look wrong

Still stuck? Email our support team.