How Children Get To School Around The World
LifeBuzz I Life
For most children getting to school means taking a bus ride or carpool, and some are lucky enough to be able to walk a short distance. But for children in other parts of the world, getting to school can be a long and dangerous journey of wading through freezing rivers, trekking on the side of a mountain, or walking on four single-plank bridges. Although poverty is the main reason students around the world are robbed of an education, other factors are affecting an estimated 617 million children and adolescents from achieving minimum proficiency levels in reading and math.
Children with disabilities, ethnic minorities, girls, conflict, and war zones are top of the list. Location also plays a factor. Unicef estimates that students living in rural areas “are twice as likely to be out of primary school.”
For many families, sending their children to school is the only option for a better future for themselves, their families and their community. Studies show that children who do not attend school face a dim future.
This may explain the harrowing journeys students take to get to school.
Sipa Press
Kids in Gulu, China, walk for five hours, over a 1-foot wide path to get to school.
Sipa Press
Sipa Press
Imaginachina/Rex Features
Unsecured wooden ladders are used on the route to school in Zhang Jiawan village, in Southern China
Timothy Allen
In one of the most remote regions of northern India, parents and grandparents walk their kids through the treacherous mountain paths in the Himalayas.
Reuters
Students hold on to what is left of a suspension bridge after flooding. The bridge is the only connection between two villages in the district of Lebak in Indonesia.
Christoph Otto
Daisy Mora holds onto her five-year-old brother Jamid stuffed in a sack container while also holding on to steel cables to cross the canyon in the Rio Negro valley in Colombia. The steel cable is 800m in length and strung above 400 metres. The dangerous cross takes about 60 seconds.
Christoph Otto
Nico Fredia
Canoeing to school in Riau, Indonesia.
The Atlantic
Walking through a tree-root bridge in India.
Andrey
Dilwar Mandal
A rope serves as the closest thing to a seatbelt for the pupils riding on this tuktuk (auto-rickshaw) in Beldanga, India.
Rex Features
Crossing an unstable bridge through the snow in Dujiangyan, a Sichuan province inChina
Muhammad Buchari
Uniformed students stand on the roof of a wooden boat in Pangururan, Indonesia.
Reuters
Schoolgirls crossing a plank over the wall of a 16th century Galle Fort in Sri Lanka.
Reuters
These pupils in Kerala, India, get to school by boat.
Reuters
Getting a horse cart ride for these students in Delhi, India.
Reuters
A makeshift raft is the transportation mode along the Ciherang river in Cilangkap, Indonesia.
A dangerous, 125-mile trek through the mountains in Pili, China.
Panjalu Images
Children walk on a tightrope while holding on to rusted steel cables, standing 30 feet above a river in Padang, Indonesia. After getting to the other side, the students then walk another seven miles through the forest to get to school.
EPA
Young students use a tire tube to cross a river in Rizal, Philippines.