Just over 1-million of primary (12.2%) school learners take longer than 30 minutes to reach their schools, according to an analysis of the 2022 General Household survey results by Children Count, an advocacy project of the Children’s Institute at the University of Cape Town.

Close to 1-million (19%) high school learners also take longer than half an hour to get to school.

Almost one-quarter of primary school learners in KwaZulu-Natal take longer than 30 minutes to travel to school. In Mpumalanga, 27% of high schoolers take the same amount of time. These are the highest percentages recorded out of all the provinces.

In the 2022 survey, 2.5% of children said they didn’t attend school because they just could not get there.

Then Basic Education Minister Angie Motshekga acknowledged in November last year that 900,946 learners from 5,635 schools were in need of learner transport.