Many South African school children are known to travel fairly long distances to school each day, in pursuit of the best possible educational opportunities in a schooling system that is known to vary greatly in quality. This thesis documents the dimensions and determinants of the daily, education-related travel of primary school aged children in Johannesburg-Soweto, South Africa. It uses data on a sample of 1428 children drawn from the Birth to Twenty cohort study to provide the first population-based data on the extent of learner mobility in contemporary urban South Africa. Learner mobility is measured in three different ways: firstly by the straight line distance between a child‘s home and his or her school; secondly by whether the child‘s school falls into the same geographical area as his or her home; and thirdly by whether the child attends his or her nearest, grade-appropriate school. The thesis provides clear evidence for extensive mobility using all three of these approaches to measurement. Over 25% of children were found to be travelling more than 5km each way to school and back on a daily basis. Almost 60% of children attended a school outside of the Census 2001 Sub-Place (roughly equivalent to a suburb) in which they lived, and fewer than 20% of children attended the grade-appropriate school nearest to their home. Counter to expectations, these figures were fairly stable over time, suggesting that educational mobility does not increase substantially as children age or transition to high school. Mobile children attended significantly more well-resourced and well-performing schools than their non-mobile peers, and the quality of schools attended increased with distance travelled. This substantiates the assumption that children and families make use of educational mobility to improve the quality of education that they are able to access. The analyses presented in the thesis suggest that two distinct patterns of mobility, with different determinants, are in use in the Johannesburg-Soweto area. The first relates primarily to travel from townships to historically advantaged schools in suburban Johannesburg, and typically requires substantial economic investment and extensive parental involvement. The second form of mobility operates at a more local level, and relates to children and families making choices between a number of relatively local schools. This form of mobility is less resource intensive. Children engaging in the first form of mobility were more likely to attend a particularly advantaged school, and to have a well-educated mother. By contrast, children engaged in the second form of mobility were more likely to live in a disadvantaged area, and come from households with moderate SES levels. iv The findings of this thesis provide important insights into the nature of school choice in South Africa, which have implications for educational policy, and the understanding of the nature of urban poverty as experienced by South African children. They also contribute to the international school choice literature, by providing novel information about the implications of relatively unregulated school choice for educational inequality and segregation in the South African context.

Eine Auswertung der Unfallzahlen der Kommunalen Unfallversicherung Bayerns von 2007 bis 2011 zeigte, dass es innerhalb Bayerns große regionale Unterschiede im fahrradbezogenen Unfallgeschehen auf dem Schulweg gibt. Durch ein mehrstufiges multimethodisches Studiendesign wurde der Frage nachgegangen, ob es in den unfallbelasteten Landkreisen tatsächlich gefährlicher ist mit dem Rad zur Schule zu fahren und nach den Ursachen der räumlichen Diskrepanzen gesucht. Mittels regressionsanalytischer Verfahren konnte ein Großteil der räumlichen Varianz der Unfallraten auf die unterschiedlichen Voraussetzungen zum Radfahren zurückgeführt werden: Je weiter und je hügeliger der Weg zur Schule ist, umso weniger Unfälle ereignen sich, wobei vermutet werden kann, dass dieser Zusammenhang Folge der niedrigen Radnutzung ist. Doch auch bei Landkreisen mit ähnlichen Radfahrbedingungen, etwa bei den kreisfreien Mittelstädten Rosenheim und Schweinfurt, lassen sich große Unterschiede im fahrradbezogenen Unfallgeschehen feststellen. Um zu überprüfen, ob auch hierfür die variierende Radnutzung verantwortlich ist, fand im Rahmen einer Fall-Kontroll-Studie eine Messung der Schulwegmobilität in diesen beiden Städten statt, wodurch das jeweilige expositionsbereinigte Unfallrisiko berechnet werden konnte. Die Erhebung zeigte, dass die distanz- und zeitbezogenen Inzidenzraten der beiden Untersuchungsregionen nahezu identisch sind. Dies belegt, dass das Unfallgeschehen hauptsächlich von der Radnutzung abhängt, wobei die Ursachen für die abweichende Radnutzung durch eine Schüler- und Lehrerbefragung empirisch untersucht wurde. Unfallschwerpunkte im Schülerradverkehr sind also statistische Artefakte, da aus der Unfallrate ohne die Kenntnis der Radnutzung auf das Unfallrisiko geschlossen wurde. Regionsunabhängig aber ist das fahrradspezifische Unfallrisiko auf Schulwegen deutlich höher als etwa auf dem Weg zur Arbeit, was die Dringlichkeit verdeutlicht, präventiv tätig zu werden. / Analyzing the number of accidents between 2007 and 2011, registered by the Kommunale Unfallversicherung Bayern, revealed great regional differences in bicycle traffic accidents on the way to school in Bavaria. A multi-stage, multi-methodical study design was set up to find answers to the question, if it is actually more dangerous to cycle to school in districts with high accident rates. The reasons for regional discrepancies in these accident rates were identified, while a varying rate of bicycle use was detected the main cause for interregional differences in the number of accidents.Regression analysis indicated that the majority of spatial variance in accident rates is based on different cycling conditions; the further and more hilly the way to school, the less accidents occur. However, it can be assumed that this correlation is a consequence of lower bicycle use. On the other hand in regions with similar cycling conditions great differences in bicycle traffic accidents can be observed, which the study shows for the district-free, mid-sized cities Rosenheim and Schweinfurt. This case-control-study on the way-to-school mobility measured for the two cities the exposition-adjusted risk of accident and was performed to reveal if this effect is also caused by varying bicycle use rates. The study pinpointed the fact that distance- and time-related incidence rates are almost identical in both study regions,which is an evidence for bicycle use rates mainly affecting the number of accidents. The reasons for differing bicycle usage were examined empirically by questioning pupils and teachers. As a conclusion, accident black spots in pupils` bicycle traffic are statistical artefacts, as the accident risk was gathered from the accident rate without knowing bicycle use rates. However, regardless of the region, cycling to school is remarkably more dangerous than cycling to work, a fact that underlines the urgency to act preventively.