Reaching the marginalized: EFA global monitoring report, 2010; 2010

010CHAPTER 32Education for All Global Monitoring ReportEvidence fromLatin Americaindicates thatcombining workwith schooling isdetrimental toeducationalachievement6. Hazardous child labouris defined by theInternational LabourOrganization as work indangerous or unhealthyconditions, or under poorsafety and healthstandards and workingarrangements, that couldresult in a child’s death,injury or illness.will add to the pressures on the poorest households,with potentially damaging consequences foreducation (see Chapter 1).Child labour remains a barrier to educationChild labour is a deeply entrenched obstacle toEducation for All. Household poverty forces millionsof children out of school and into paying jobs or –especially for young girls – domestic chores.The International Labour Organization putthe number of child labourers aged 5 to 14at 166 million in 2004 (Hagemann et al., 2006).Not all child labourers are kept out of school.Most combine school and work, though often withdamaging effects on their education. Some workbecause their parents cannot afford to send themto school. Others work to help their families makeends meet or to provide labour in the home.Understanding the interplay between educationaldisadvantage and child labour is critical not onlyfor education, but also for child welfare and widernational poverty reduction efforts.Child labour ranges in scope from young girlscollecting water and firewood with their mothersto young boys tending cattle and engaging in paidwork, and to more extreme and dangerous formsof work. The worst forms of child labour are adirect source of marginalization in education.Over half the children engaged in labour in 2004were in hazardous work, involving dangerousconditions, long hours or hazardous machinery(Blanco Allais and Quinn, 2009). 6 Such children canbe seen every day scavenging for rubbish in Manila,working on building sites in New Delhi or sellingnewspapers at traffic junctions in Haiti. They arealso forced into more invisible forms of labour,such as involvement in sex work.The degree to which children combine work andschool varies by country. There are no upper limitbenchmarks, but children working about thirtyhours a week or more are unlikely to attend school(Edmonds, 2007); (Box 3.5). Moreover, it cannot beassumed that ability to combine work and school isconducive to learning. Evidence from eleven LatinAmerican countries indicates that this is detrimentalto educational achievement (Gunnarsson et al.,2006). In each country, child labourers achievedsignificantly lower scores in language andmathematics tests in third and fourth grades,controlling for school and household characteristics.Even modest levels of child labour at early ageshad adverse consequences for cognitive abilities,with regular work being most detrimental(Gunnarsson et al., 2006; Sánchez et al., 2009).Poverty has a very direct bearing on patterns ofchild labour. Poorer children are more likely thanwealthier children to work outside the home andless likely to combine work with school (BlancoAllais and Quinn, 2009). In Zambia, children fromhouseholds in the lowest income quintile aremore likely not only to work, but also to facehazardous work conditions (UnderstandingChildren’s Work, 2009).In urban areas, many child labourers live on streets,either with destitute parents or with other children.These children experience particularly stark formsof marginalization in education. One study coveringseven cities in Pakistan found that fewer than 5%of children living on streets had completed primaryeducation (Tufail, 2005). A survey in Bangladeshfound that only 8% of street children were inschool at the time of the survey and only 14%had completed third grade of primary school(Foundation for Research on Educational Planningand Development, 2003).Child labour in rural areas is often less visible, butno less widespread or damaging. A 2007 survey ofchildren on cocoa plantations in Côte d’Ivoire andGhana documented striking examples of childrenapplying toxic pesticides, working in extreme heatand using dangerous implements. In Côte d’Ivoire,many children in cocoa production had beentrafficked from Burkina Faso and Mali as bondedlabourers (Payson Center for InternationalDevelopment, 2008). Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana haveintroduced laws aimed at curtailing the practice(World Cocoa Foundation, 2009), but theeffectiveness of national action and regionalcooperation remain of concern. More broadly,governments are often more adept at adoptingstatements against child labour than at addressingthe underlying causes of the problem.Child labour often magnifies poverty-related genderdisadvantage. A common thread across manycountries with large gender disparities in educationis the disproportionately large share of thehousehold labour burden that young girls carry.In the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, for bothurban and rural populations, the average time spentin school falls with poverty and young girls in poorhouseholds spend less time in classrooms thanyoung boys. Poor rural girls spend just over twohours a day studying and five hours working, on168