How can we understand the correlation between the incidence of child labour and poor school attendance and educational achievement? In South Asia, is it poverty that drives children into the workplace or is it policy failure which keeps kids out of classrooms? What needs to be done to eliminate child labour and to universalise education?

A paper from the Institute of Development Studies explores the geographical, economic and social dimensions of the twin problems of child labour and poor educational outcomes in India and Bangladesh. It unpicks the arguments of the ‘realists’ who see child labour as a harsh but unavoidable reality and ‘idealists’ who see work as a violation of the rights of the child. Poverty, it argues, is not necessarily an insurmountable barrier to accessing educational services. There is a need to draw out the lessons from the efforts of the few educational planners who have understood the patterns of disadvantage caused by caste, gender, ethnicity and livelihood insecurity and who have started delivering educational services geared to the needs of the marginalised.

Both countries have legislative prohibitions against child labour but these are confined to formal sector employment and are, in any case, only sporadically enforced. Official statistics on child labour and educational enrolment are suspect. While 1991 Indian census data suggested there were 11.29 million working children, child labour activists cite a figure of up to a 100 million. Formal data collection does not recognise as ‘economic’ such kinds of stigmatised labour as fuel collection, rag picking, domestic work and prostitution. Perhaps half of the girls of school-going age are ‘nowhere’ children, excluded from both work and educational statistics. What is needed in both Bangladesh and India are more subtle categories to capture data on all the children between those in full-time education and those who have never been to school.

Among other findings are:

• Drop-out rates are boosted by mechanistic forms of learning, inflexible school schedules not attuned to the agricultural calendar, unmotivated and indolent teachers (disproportionately high caste and supported by powerful unions) and toleration of bullying from higher caste children.
• Indian states with similar levels of poverty have strikingly different levels of educational performance. In Uttar Pradesh, for example, only 32 percent of rural 12 to 14-year-old girls have ever been to school, compared with 98 percent in Kerala).
• Discontentment with state education is so widespread that private schools are no longer only for the privileged but attract pupils from families across the spectrum of income groups, including in rural areas.
• Non-formal education and vocational training for the marginalised are inferior substitutes for real education as they serve to reproduce pre-existing inequalities.

The report recommends that policymakers should:

• learn from the local NGOs, which believe that realising every child’s right to education is the only way to eliminate child labour
• encourage parents and teachers to work together to make schools more hospitable to children from excluded groups
• realise that sound education policies work most effectively in tandem with pro-poor policies which promote household livelihoods and tackle ingrained inequalities.

Source(s):
‘Deprivation, discrimination and delivery: competing explanations for child labour and educational failure in South Asia’, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, by Naila Kabeer, May 2001 Full document.

Funded by: Department for International Development, UK

id21 Research Highlight: 16 May 2002

Further Information:
Naila Kabeer
Institute of Development Studies
University of Sussex
Brighton BNI 9RE
UK

Tel: +44 (0)1273 606261
Fax: +44 (0)1273 621202
Contact the contributor: nailak@ids.ac.uk

Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

Other related links:
'Do child rights travel well? Evidence from Bangladesh'

'To school or not to school? School enrolment in India'

'Trapped by parental control ? Child labour migrants in India'

ILO aims towards the abolition of child labour

Save the Children is working to end exploitative child labour

UNICEF's Early Childhood – The State of the World’s Children Report 2002

See the UNESCO programme 'Growing up in the cities'