Geographical Locations of Secondary Schools and Effects on Students’ Distance Travelled from Home to School in Five Urban Local Government Areas of Ibadan Metropolis, Oyo State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study presents the spatial location distribution of private and public secondary schools and assesses the effects of distance travelled from home to school in five urban local government areas of Ibadan metropolis, Oyo State, Nigeria. Field survey methods were adopted by obtaining the geographic coordinates of schools using a handheld Global Positioning System (GPS Garmin 78s) and a structured questionnaire consisting of fifteen (15) questions and interviews to assess the effect of distance travelled from home to school from selected private and public secondary schools and from selected students in the study areas. Data were processed using ArcGIS 10.4 (Arcmap 10.4) to show the spatial locations of schools, and IBM SPSS (statistics 20) to assess the effects of distance travelled from home to school on students. The result of geographic locations of schools showed a cluster spatial distribution pattern in the North-eastern part of Ibadan southwest, south-western part of Ibadan Northeast and North-western part of Ibadan Northwest and few schools are located in the south-western part of Ibadan Southeast and Ibadan Southwest local government areas. However, the result also showed that students’ distance travelled had significant effects on students' mental ability, academic participation and academic performance, communication between teachers and students’, students’ insecurity to and from, and stoppage along the travel route. The result of the correlation coefficient showed that there is a positive and negative association between questions and answers from the respondents.