Wilmslow High School has introduced car park barriers to make the site safer for their students and stop drivers from using it as a cut through.
The school received a grant from Sustrans, who are keen to support children cycling to school, to purchase more bike sheds and put the car park barriers in place.
Head Gill Bremner explained "I was not prepared to put in more new bike sheds unless we removed the 'rat run' between the A34 and Holly Road and vice versa.
"We think the safety of students, staff and community users is very important: hopefully this system will reduce considerably the number of cars accessing the car park inappropriately. Parents dropping off children do not need to access the car park.
"People using the car park in the evenings and at weekends for lettings and sports events will have to pay £1 to use the car park: there will be times when we keep the barrier up as the event is too large or too complex to manage the system smoothly."
Another advantage from implementing car park barriers is that Wilmslow High will be able to raise money for the school.
Gill Bremner said "In this first year we have decided to use the income to support transport for educational visits for all students across all curriculum areas. Last year we spent £40,000 on transport and whilst we had the money then through specialist schools funding we no longer have that level of support.
The barriers are for the car park only, the access roundabout from the A34 and the entrance area from Holly Road will still be accessible to allow; parents to drop off and collect students; deliveries to be made; taxis to drop off/ collect students and visitors to park in the visitors' car park.
When the barrier is down, drivers have to pay £1 to enter. The car park barrier will be down in the evenings and at weekends but it will be raised at parents' evenings, Open Evenings and other events when the anticipated usage of the car park will cause too much inconvenience.
Gill Bremner added "These guidelines will be evaluated and modifications made as the system embeds. We know there will be initial teething problems whilst people get used to the system.
"One problem we can see, for example, is that drivers will have to get out of their cars to put the £1 in the machine (our access roads are not wide enough to have 2 barriers and a central box and there were several reasons why the box is seemingly placed on the 'wrong' side at the Holly Road entrance): legitimate users will get used to this and it will hopefully deter our 'rat runners' who hardly slow down at present."
The new system came into operation on Monday, 12th December.
