E-Paper
Almost 60% of students in India travel to school on foot: Survey
The percentage of girls travelling to school on foot is higher than the average at 62 per cent, while it is 57.9 per cent for boys.
As many as 59.7 per cent of students in India walk to school with the number being much higher in rural areas, according to the National Statistical Organisation’s (NSO) latest report on education. The percentage of girls travelling to school on foot is higher than the average at 62 per cent, while it is 57.9 per cent for boys.
The same trend is observed when data for rural and urban areas is looked at separately. While 61.4 per cent of boys walk to school in rural areas, the percentage of girls stands at 66.5 and it is 57.9 per cent and 62 per cent respectively in urban areas.
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The second most preferred mode of travel is public transport, with 12.4 per cent of the students using it in the country. In rural areas, 11.3 per cent of students use public transport to travel to school while a significantly higher percentage, 15.3, use it in urban areas.
Information was also collected on how regularly students availed the concessional fare in public transport for attending educational institutions. As many as 48.3 per cent students who received concession used public transport, this number being higher in rural areas (51.3 per cent) than in urban areas (42.7 per cent).
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To give context to the data, the distance between students’ households and schools was also studied and it was found that in rural areas 92.7 per cent of households reported availability of primary school within 1 km from the house and in urban areas the number stood at 87.2 per cent.
Nearly 68 per cent of rural households and 80 per cent of urban households reported upper primary schools within 1 km from the house while only around 38 per cent of rural households compared to around 70 per cent of urban households reported secondary schools within such a distance.
