The use of geospatial approach in assessing the impacts of long distance to school on students and pupils of Gidan mango/garatu axis in Bosso local government area of Niger state, Nigeria

Since modern formal education was introduced in developing countries, efforts have been made by various countries including Nigeria to universalize basic education. Based on the importance of education to development, there is need to address the effect of long distance between settlements and schools. Educational institutions are often scarce in rural areas, even when accessible, children may have to walk long distances to attend, which could have a greater deterring effect on girls due to safety reasons - hence adding to gender disparities. Many children, in rural areas, struggle with real difficulties such as walking long distance to school, the lack of classrooms. The aim of this study is to use geospatial approach in assessing the impacts of long distance to school on students and pupils of Gidan Mangoro and Garatu axis in Bosso local governmentArea. The data utilized in this study include structured questionnaires (QS) distributed throughout the five schools in the study area and the soft copy and hard copy of Quick bird image of 2006 of the study area was employed with the base map of the study area. Intensive field survey was carried out with the use of global positioning system (GPS) to locate the actual point of schools and settlements within thestudy area. Results show that, the majority of the pupils and students do walk long distance (between 0.5km-2.3km) to school. The impacts of this long distance trekking to school on the students and pupils within Gidan-Mangoro and Garatu area include; lateness to school, been tired quickly while doing school activities such as lessons, sleeping while lessons are going on and many are discouraged of going to school because of this stress of walking a long distance and it impacts on their body and on their learning capacity. Recommendations include that the various tares of government and stakeholders should establish more schools in the study area with the necessary facilities for effective teaching and learning; government should not shed the responsibility of providing equal education opportunity for rural residents in the name of limited resources; a map showing distribution and location of schools should be updated time to time for better decision making.