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The Common Sense analysed Statistics South Africa (Stats SA) data from 2009 to 2025 to answer a practical question: how do South Africa’s learners get to school? The data show that parents have built a large informal transport system of their own, hiring vehicles together to get their children to class.

The chart below places the growth in context, showing the estimated number of schoolchildren aged seven to 18 using each main mode of transport to travel to school over the period.

The biggest growth in the graph is a category Stats SA labels “vehicle hired by a group of parents”. In 2009, parent-hired vehicles took about 430 000 learners to school. By 2025 the figure was about two million, nearly five times as many. That makes it the second-most common way of getting to school, after walking. Parent-hired vehicles now carry about three times as many learners as government school buses. Parents have, in effect, built their own informal school bus system, and it serves roughly one in seven of the country's schoolchildren.

What makes this trend interesting is that it is not confined to cities. Parent-hired transport has also grown in rural areas, where it now carries about six times as many learners as it did in 2009. The next two charts show how learners get to school, first in urban areas and then in rural areas.

The growth of parent-hired transport may reflect two decisions. Some parents may be arranging transport simply to get their children to the nearest school where public provision falls short. Others may be paying to reach a school further away because they believe it offers a better education than their nearest public school. As The Common Sense has previously reported, families are increasingly committing their own resources to securing better schooling for their children. Parent-hired transport may be another expression of that willingness.

This fits the pattern The Common Sense has written about at length as the enclavisation of South Africa: households, communities, and private providers organising essential services where public provision falls short. It is most visible in cities, through private security estates and similar arrangements. But, as this newspaper has argued before, it extends to poorer and rural communities too. The growth of parent-hired school transport provides evidence of these private arrangements in rural South Africa.