Is the school van safe for your child?

By Dickson Tumuramye

It’s a trend for most private schools to have school vans that take learners from home to school and back daily during the school term. In fact, this arrangement of picking up and dropping off children eases a lot of transportation challenges for most parents.

Even if you don’t have a car, your children can benefit from a van. If you are a busy person and have no time to take and pick up children from school, this solves your problem. They therefore make life easier.

There are certain challenges I have observed with these school vans. There is always overcrowding in them. They can load so many children and exceed the capacity of the car. You will find a van that is meant to take 14 passengers is carrying over 30 children and this could be unsafe for the children’s health. I get so concerned about the time some schools pick up and drop children. Typically, a kindergartener leaves his or her home at 5:30am but reaches school at 7:30am. They leave school at 4pm and arrive home around 6pm. These are four hours a child spends on the road daily in that van, sometimes crowded. You will find that most of these children are picked up from a radius of less than 10kms. It can take less than 30 minutes to leave home and reach school. However, since the van has to pick up children from different places before driving back to school, your child will spend more time at home or at school.

I will never forget our experience during the COVID-19 lockdowns. We used to walk a lot with our children in the neighborhoods. We were shocked that everywhere we walked, our children knew all the places. They would tell you this is our classmate's home, this one is for the other girl or boy. Then they would narrate stories of what would happen in the van as they moved around. For some children, it is always fun and they enjoy it. For some, they get tired but are powerless to convince their parents to stop taking them in vans.

Our children used to get home late and very tired and we could not figure out why. We also became concerned that someone would sometimes leave Kampala city at 5pm and reach Mukono by 6:30 pm when these children had not yet arrived at home. We usually sleep late and have to force our children to go to school by 9pm during holidays. During school terms, we put our children to bed by 8pm after meals and prayers. However, some of them will not reach that point. They would opt to retire to sleep without taking meals.

After hearing all sorts of stories and relating them to what we used to observe, we decided to drop and pick up our children when schools resumed. They leave home at 6am to attend morning prep with the rest and by 4:20pm, they are back at home.

I do not know what your experience has been with the school van. You can testify as to whether or not it is all roses. But I still feel there is something we can do if you are in the category of those picked so early and dropped late, very exhausted and sleepy even when the school is not far away from you. You can decide to do it yourself and drop these children at school.

If it is not possible to pick and drop by yourself, it is perfectly fine. But you may need to adjust the time the child sleeps when he/she gets home. This is due to the fact that you may have less control over the scheduled time and route for your child. This may give you the opportunity to relax better and get up early. You may decide to either drop or pick them up from school if you are a busy person. For example, if the school is within walking distance, you can choose to use a van in the morning and pick up the child yourself in the afternoon or vice versa. Choose what is most convenient for you.

You could also opt for a boda boda if you have a trusted rider that can take and pick your child(ren) and they use a few minutes than more hours on the road. However, you need to weigh the risks of bodaboda and too many hours in a van. You may need to check how your child is treated in that school van. There are schools with caretakers of such vans who don’t have proper customer care. They may be less aware of the health challenges in that van.

The writer is a child advocate, parenting coach, marriage counselor and founder – Men of Purpose Mentorship program

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Dickson Tumuramye is also a passionate speaker on:

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