Ugandan learners spend more time in school vans than in classrooms

By Wabusimba Amiri

In the quiet of dawn, when many households are still draped in the comfort of sleep, a peculiar rhythm plays across our neighbourhoods, car engines revving, hoots piercing the silence, and hurried footsteps of maids guiding half-asleep children to waiting school vans. These vans, often disguised as neat and labelled “school transport,” begin their routes as early as 4:30 a.m., picking up young children, some as young as five years old, long before sunrise.

What should be a simple journey to school transforms into a gruelling, multi-hour ordeal that exposes a deeper crisis in Uganda’s school transport system and its implications for child welfare.

While parents trust these vans to safely and promptly deliver their children to school, the reality on the ground is different. In some cases, a child is picked up at 5 a.m., only to arrive at school past 8 a.m. after spending nearly three hours in a tightly packed vehicle.

With stops across various neighbourhoods, each van slowly fills up while the first children picked are left to endure the entire journey seated uncomfortably, sometimes squeezed against peers with barely enough space to breathe. This practice, although normalized, raises serious questions about the physical and mental toll such commutes have on children, particularly those in early childhood education.

There is an unspoken societal compromise here: convenience over conscience. Parents celebrate schools that “care” for children by allowing them to rest on mattresses during class hours without questioning why such rest is even necessary.

Few stop to ask why a child is already exhausted before the academic day begins. Even fewer probe how many hours over the weekend they allocate for the child’s rest compared to the daily demand of early departures and late returns.

From a policy perspective, this issue falls into a grey area, while Uganda’s traffic regulations prohibit overloading and unsafe transportation, enforcement is errati,c especially during these early morning hours when law enforcers and policy makers themselves are not present on the streets.

Many of these vans pass police checkpoints without consequence, despite visible overcrowding. This failure in enforcement perpetuates the cycle, and implicitly, a collective societal neglect of children’s rights.

The 1995 Constitution of Uganda and the Children’s Act underscore the protection of children’s rights to health, education, and dignity. Article 34(1) of the Constitution provides that children have the right to be cared for by their parents or guardians, and by extension, to be protected from harmful practices.

Prolonged, stressful commutes, particularly in overfilled vans, violate not only these provisions but also international child protection frameworks like the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), to which Uganda is a signatory.

Education institutions have a duty of care, but that duty should not begin at the school gate. It must include oversight of the transportation systems they license or subcontract. The Ministry of Education and Sports, in partnership with the Ministry of Works and Transport, should establish clear guidelines on school transport: maximum travel times for children, proper seating standards, driver accountability, and routine inspection mechanisms. Data collection on transport practices must be institutionalized, ensuring evidence-based decisions rather than anecdotal tolerance.

Beyond policy, this is a parental and community concern. Parents must move from passive acceptance to active engagement. Ask questions. Demand transparency from schools about routes and travel times. Lobby for neighbourhood-based schools or shared transport options that minimize long-distance commuting. Explore community carpool initiatives.

Engage in school boards to influence change from within. Because if we, as parents and guardians, continue to prioritize our comfort over the child’s dignity and well-being, we become complicit in their silent suffering.

The cost of education should never be exhaustion. The privilege of learning should not come wrapped in trauma. Every early morning hoot we ignore, every overcrowded van we allow to pass unchallenged, is a note in a growing symphony of neglect. The journey to school must never be a child’s first struggle of the day.

The writer is a communication specialist, diplomatic Scholar, Journalist, political analyst, and a human rights activist!