A NEWPORT head teacher fears parents will not stop parking recklessly outside his school until someone is injured.

Michael Williams, head teacher of St Michael's Primary School, in Pill, claims parking chaos at the Baldwin Close school is putting his pupils in danger.

He claims his appeals for parents to be more careful were falling on deaf ears, and it could take a child being hurt before things changed. He said: "We have 168 pupils, most of whom travel to school by car, and first thing in the morning and at the end of the school day the road outside is chaos.

"Parents regularly double-park or stop in the middle of the road to let children in and out.

"We've had no-parking zigzag lines installed but some people are just ignoring them.

"I've written to parents, asking them to be more careful, but I'm worried that until a child is actually hurt nothing is going to change."

Local resident Ken Chambers said he and his neighbours were also concerned about the amount of traffic in the area.

He said: "At 9am and 3pm you can't move around here for all the cars. "Old people are afraid to cross the road. Things have always been busy, but since work started on the SDR it's got even worse - traffic seems to use us as an alternative route."

The volume of traffic and behaviour of drivers outside schools is a growing worry for teachers and road safety groups throughout the UK. Last week the Argus revealed that most of Gwent was falling behind the rest of the UK and much of Wales in installing 20mph zones outside schools.

Road safety group Brake are calling for 20mph zones to be installed outside all schools in the UK.

Nobody at Newport council was available to comment.