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Getting
to school: achieving universal primary education
id21.org
July 04,
2006
http://www.id21.org/zinter/id21zinter.exe?a=0&i=insights63art2&u=45068c6a
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 Durham with children, teachers and parents in
Gomoa and Assin districts in southern Ghana identifies transport
availability and costs as a significant barrier to rural children’s
regular school attendance.
Children may
have to walk up to six kilometres to go to school, after they have
done household chores and other types of work (often involving transporting
goods). At one off-road village, boys and girls from about the age
of ten regularly carry heavy loads of firewood to the district headquarters
to sell before they go to school – a total journey of around ten
kilometres.
Bad roads and
inadequate or expensive transport commonly prevent children living
in more remote areas from attending school regularly. Other transport
and mobility-related factors influencing school attendance include:
- Age, gender,
birth order, physical disability and family socio-economic status
may affect which children are able to travel long distances to
school, particularly if travel is unaccompanied and involves unreliable
public transport.
- Local agricultural
conditions and associated economic production patterns affect
the daily chores that a child is expected to perform, such as
herding cattle and collecting water and firewood.
- The distances
between the locations of these activities and the transport available
affect how much extra time a child has
- Inadequate
and/or costly transport for moving farm produce and other goods
may cause families to use their children, especially girls, as
porters, which delays or prevents their attendance.
- Where public
transport is costly and/or irregular, boys may be able to use
bicycles to reach distant schools; the time girls spend on domestic
tasks (and sometimes cultural conventions) tend to restrict their
opportunities to cycle.
- Teachers
are often reluctant to take up positions in more remote village
schools because poor transport options will isolate them from
regular interaction with colleagues and other people of similar
social status. Such villages may be without adequate teachers
for long periods; teachers posted to these locations may take
regular unofficial absences.
Children and
teachers face many difficulties getting to school in rural parts
of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Insufficient evidence exists
however, concerning the extent and nature of impacts on school enrolment
and attendance.
A new study
is starting to develop this work on children and mobility in sub-Saharan
Africa. Where linkages are found, imaginative context-specific solutions
will be needed. These might include:
promoting wider
availability of bicycles (as the recent Shova Kalula National Bicycle
Programme has done in South Africa by providing subsidised bicycles),
bicycle repair courses for girls and boys in school, girls-only
buses, or distance learning
research that
directly involves children (both in and out of school) to establish
both the issues and potential solutions
using public
sector transport to achieve educational goals, including running
mobile libraries with information and communication technologies,
travel allowances for teachers, organising school transport and
so on.
Source(s):
- ‘Improving
policy on children’s mobility and access through development of
a participatory child-centred field methodology/toolkit’, Project
Pages Full document.
- Children,
Transport and Traffic in Southern Ghana, International workshop
on children and traffic’ by Gina Porter and Kathrin Blaufuss,
Copenhagen, Denmark, 2-3 May, 2002
- Transport,
the missing link? A catalyst for achieving the MDGs’, July 2006,
id21 insights #63 Full document.
Funded by: UK
Department for International Development
Further Information:
Gina Porter
Department of Anthropology
University
of Durham
43 Old
Elvet
Durham,
DH1 3HN
UK
Contact the
contributor: r.e.porter@durham.ac.uk
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
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