Long walks to school keep Tanzanian primary school children out of the classroom, School of GeoSciences study finds

Children in Tanzania who live more than 45 minutes' walk from their nearest primary school are almost 28% more likely to have never attended school in a particular year, according to new research from the School of GeoSciences.

Image of children walking to school in Tanzania — Image credit: Roy Gilham via Getty Images

The study, published in the ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, focuses on a problem that affects millions of children worldwide. Globally, 273 million school-age children are currently out of school, and more than 200 million live in Central and Southern Asia or Sub-Saharan Africa, regions where walking remains the main way children get to class.

In Tanzania over 300,000 children dropped out before finishing primary school in 2023, and only 8.5% go on to complete upper-secondary school education.

Researchers combined high-resolution maps of walking travel time with national survey data covering over 9,000 primary-age children and 2,500 secondary-age adolescents across Tanzania. Travel-time maps at 100-metre resolution were calculated using an algorithm developed by the team, accounting for terrain, land cover and road networks, and linked these to Tanzania's 2022 Demographic and Health Survey.

The findings show that every extra 10 minutes of walking time raised the likelihood of a child never attending school in a particular year by around 3%, an effect that held true regardless of household wealth or maternal education. This appeared not to be the case for secondary school-age adolescents, for whom household wealth and maternal education were the strongest indicators, rather than distance.

The authors say the results point to a shift in the barriers children face as they grow older: geography and infrastructure limit access at primary level, while economic and social factors take over at secondary level.

They argue that these results support two different policy responses: geographically targeted investment in new primary schools to cut walking times in underserved areas, and separate, socioeconomically targeted support, such as fee waivers or stipends, to keep older teenagers in secondary education once distance stops being the main obstacle.

Our analysis shows that geographic access remains a significant barrier to primary school participation in Tanzania — understanding where these barriers exist is the first step to addressing them.
This research, building on travel-time methods we developed and published in Scientific Data for access to health centres, gives an indication of who might be being left behind by distance to school.

The study was led by Farhiya Jarso, School of GeoSciences - who initially developed the idea as part of her MSc dissertation in Earth observation - together with Gary Watmough (School of GeoSciences) and William C. Smith (Moray House School of Education and Sport).

Related links