Getting to school: achieving universal primary education

Physical mobility and transport barriers that prevent rural children from attending primary school can be substantial but are often complex and hidden. The situation is particularly severe in sub-Saharan Africa where, with few exceptions, more than half the children in any age group fail to attend school regularly.

Research by the University of Durhamwith children, teachers and parents in Gomoa and Assin districts in southern Ghana identifies transport availability and costs as asignificant barrier to rural children’s regular school attendance.

Children may have to walk up to six kilometres to goto school, after they have done household chores and other types of work (ofteninvolving transporting goods). At one off-road village, boys and girls fromabout the age of ten regularly carry heavy loads of firewood to the district headquartersto sell before they go to school – a total journey of around ten kilometres.

Bad roads and inadequate or expensive transportcommonly prevent children living in more remote areas from attending schoolregularly. Other transport and mobility-related factors influencing school attendanceinclude:

• Age, gender,birth order, physical disability and family socio-economic status may affectwhich children are able to travel long distances to school, particularly iftravel is unaccompanied and involves unreliable public transport.
• Localagricultural conditions and associated economic production patterns affect thedaily chores that a child is expected to perform, such as herding cattle andcollecting water and firewood.
• The distancesbetween the locations of these activities and the transport available affecthow much extra time a child has
• Inadequate and/orcostly transport for moving farm produce and other goods may cause families touse their children, especially girls, as porters, which delays or preventstheir attendance.
• Where publictransport is costly and/or irregular, boys may be able to use bicycles to reachdistant schools; the time girls spend on domestic tasks (and sometimes culturalconventions) tend to restrict their opportunities to cycle.
• Teachers areoften reluctant to take up positions in more remote village schools becausepoor transport options will isolate them from regular interaction withcolleagues and other people of similar social status. Such villages may bewithout adequate teachers for long periods; teachers posted to these locationsmay take regular unofficial absences.

Children and teachers face many difficulties gettingto school in rural parts of Africa, Asia and LatinAmerica. Insufficientevidence exists however, concerning the extent and nature of impacts on schoolenrolment and attendance.

A new study is starting to develop this work onchildren and mobility in sub-Saharan Africa. Where linkages are found, imaginativecontext-specific solutions will be needed. These might include:

promoting wideravailability of bicycles (as the recent Shova Kalula National Bicycle Programmehas done in South Africa by providing subsidised bicycles), bicycle repaircourses for girls and boys in school, girls-only buses, or distance learning

research thatdirectly involves children (both in and out of school) to establish both theissues and potential solutions

using publicsector transport to achieve educational goals, including running mobilelibraries with information and communication technologies, travel allowancesfor teachers, organising school transport and so on.