Child Labour and Education Policy A Training Manual

Child labour and education policy
A training manual
International
Programme on
the Elimination
of Child Labour
(IPEC)
Child labour and education policy
A training manual
International
Programme on
the Elimination
of Child Labour
(IPEC)
International Labour Organization (ILO)

Copyright © International Labour Organization 2008
First published 2008
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IPEC
Child labour and education policy : a training manual / International Labour Office. - Geneva: ILO, 2008
120 p.
ISBN: 9789221212317; 9789221212324 (Web PDF)
International Labour Office; ILO International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour
Trainers manual / child labour / schooling / access to education / compulsory education / educational policy -
13.01.2
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iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
FOREWORD ............................................................................................................................................. ix
Introduction for the facilitator.......................................................................................................... 1
Expected outcomes ......................................................................................................................... 1
Overview of the training .................................................................................................................. 1
The role of the facilitator .................................................................................................................. 2
MODULE 1 INTRODUCING CHILD LABOUR........................................................................................ 1
Unit 1: Nature, extent and causes ...................................................................................................... 9
Facilitators notes ............................................................................................................................... 9
Key definitions and policy instruments......................................................................................... 10
Extent and distribution of child Labour......................................................................................... 11
The work that children do .............................................................................................................. 12
Notes for the facilitator................................................................................................................... 13
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 13
Unit 2: The impact of child labour..................................................................................................... 14
Facilitators notes ............................................................................................................................. 14
The consequences for society ...................................................................................................... 15
Consequences for children ........................................................................................................... 16
Physical impacts............................................................................................................................. 17
Psychosocial impacts .................................................................................................................... 18
Cognitive impacts .......................................................................................................................... 19
Educational impacts ...................................................................................................................... 19
Socio-economic consequences .................................................................................................. 20
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 21
MODULE 2 INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL RESPONSES TO CHILD LABOUR............................ 23
Unit 1: The international policy framework...................................................................................... 25
Facilitators notes ............................................................................................................................. 25
Elements of the international policy framework ......................................................................... 26
Linkages........................................................................................................................................... 30
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 32
Unit 2: From international frameworks to national responses ...................................................... 33
Facilitator notes............................................................................................................................... 33
Implementation at the national Level .......................................................................................... 34
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 35
Unit 3: Responses through national legislation ............................................................................... 36
Legislative framework .................................................................................................................... 36
Unit 4: Responses through education .............................................................................................. 39
Responses through education ...................................................................................................... 40
International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour v

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 45
MODULE 3 POLICY OPTIONS ............................................................................................................. 47
Unit 1: Removing barriers to education ........................................................................................... 49
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 50
Access ............................................................................................................................................. 52
Quality ............................................................................................................................................. 54
Economic incentives - The Progresa programme in Mexico .................................................... 56
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 56
MODULE 4 AREAS FOR SPECIAL ATTENTION.................................................................................... 59
Unit 1: Exclusion and inclusive education ....................................................................................... 61
Exclusion.......................................................................................................................................... 62
Inclusive education........................................................................................................................ 63
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 64
Unit 2: Gender ...................................................................................................................................... 66
Gender............................................................................................................................................. 66
Unit 3: HIV/AIDS .................................................................................................................................... 71
HIV/AIDS, education and child labour......................................................................................... 71
Approaches to HIV/AIDS ............................................................................................................... 73
Unit 4: Minority groups - Indigenous children .................................................................................. 75
Introduction for the facilitator........................................................................................................ 75
Child labour, education and indigenous and tribal Groups ..................................................... 76
MODULE 5 GOOD PRACTICES .......................................................................................................... 79
Unit 1: Good practice ......................................................................................................................... 81
Introduction for the facilitator........................................................................................................ 81
Good practices in education to eliminate / prevent child labour ........................................... 82
Good practice at the international and national level .............................................................. 83
An example of good practice principles: Social mobilization.................................................. 84
Unit 2: Developing an effective strategy......................................................................................... 86
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 87
Effective strategies ......................................................................................................................... 87
Case examples of effective strategies ........................................................................................ 90
MODULE 6 CHILD LABOUR MONITORING AND MONITORING PROGRESS IN EDUCATION ..... 91
Unit 1: Child labour monitoring.......................................................................................................... 93
Child labour: Measuring and monitoring ..................................................................................... 94
vi
Unit 2: School-based monitoring....................................................................................................... 97
Compulsory education laws and their enforcement ................................................................. 97
The national picture........................................................................................................................ 98
The local level: Developing school-based monitoring ............................................................. 98
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 99
Unit 3: Harmonizing education and child labour monitoring .................................................... 101
Facilitator notes............................................................................................................................. 101
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................................ 103
ANNEXE: ADDITIONAL RESOURCES BY MODULE ........................................................................... 105
International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour vii

FOREWORD
Far too many children and societies are missing out on the benefits that education can provide for
their futures, because children are working instead of going to school. The ILO estimates that there
are nearly 246 million child labourers worldwide and almost 126 million trapped in hazardous work
and the worst forms of child labour. At the same time 75 million primary-aged children are out of
school and large numbers of secondary school aged children lack access to education.
There is a growing recognition within the international community that efforts to achieve Education
for All (EFA), within the broader framework of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and the
elimination of child labour are inextricably linked. On the one hand, education (in particular, free
and compulsory education of good quality up to the minimum age for entering into employment), is
a key element in the prevention of child labour. On the other hand, child labour is one of the main
obstacles to EFA, since children who are working full time cannot go to school. Child labour also
affects the academic achievement of the considerable number of children who combine work and
school. Quite often this results in these children dropping out of school and going to work.
The 2007 EFA Global Monitoring Report indicated that while significant progress has been made, the
expansion of access to primary education is not fast enough to achieve universal primary education
and related gender goals by 2015. In some countries the gender parity goal that was already missed
in 2005, may not be reached by 2015. The Report stresses the need for urgent action, particularly in
identifying hard -to -reach children.
It is clear that governments not only need to accelerate efforts to achieve EFA, they also need to
step up efforts to eliminate child labour. The education sector has great potential to contribute to
the prevention and elimination of child labour. Attention to child labour therefore, should form an
integral part of the formulation and implementation of education policies and education sector
plans.
Key UN and other international organizations are working together more effectively on the important
links between child labour and education aimed at generating global momentum to support of
action at the national and local level. Increased awareness of the need for policies that better
connect the elimination of child labour with EFA efforts has in turn generated the pressing need to
build the necessary capacity of relevant line ministries, civil society, and the main education actors,
especially Ministries of Education.
This training manual aims to facilitate this process by supporting training for policy makers on
combating child labour through education. The manual is also a valuable tool for the social
partners, and various professionals and organisations concerned with child labour and education. It
provides valuable insight and practical guidance on how to bring education policies to bear on
efforts to eliminate child labour.
International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour ix

Introduction for the facilitator
This manual aims to sensitize education policy makers to the importance of child labour issues for
education development and vice versa. The linkages between these two related areas are
considered at international, national, regional and local levels. Additionally, the manual provides a
range of resources to facilitate discussion regarding the effective integration of education and child
labour issues.
Expected outcomes
By participating in training it is anticipated that participants will develop their knowledge and
understanding of:
• The nature, causes and extent of child labour.

• The consequences of child labour.
• International and national responses to child labour.
• The interconnections between child labour and education.
• Child labour monitoring and the part schools and communities can play.
Overview of the training
This training manual consists of six modules made up of units. Each unit is comprised of the following
elements:
• Objectives
• Key messages
• List of resource materials
• Introductory material
• Activities
Additional resource materials identified in each module can be found in the Resource Pack which
accompanies this manual.
Module 1 Introducing child labour
Module 1 is an introduction to child labour - its causes, extent and consequences:

Unit 1 Nature, causes and extent
Unit 2 The consequences of child labour
Module 2 International and national responses to child labour
Module 2 introduces major international standards and initiatives with relevance to child labour and
their take-up at the national level:
Unit 1 The international policy framework
Unit 2 Implementation at the national level
Unit 3 Responses through labour laws
Unit 4 Responses through education
Module 3 Policy options
Module 3 introduces a range of policy options that can be used to overcoming the barriers to
making education more equitable and accessible to all children:
Unit 1 Removing barriers to education
International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour 1

Module 4 Areas for special attention
Module 4 draws attention to the needs of children vulnerable to educational exclusion and child
labour. It considers the specific needs of vulnerable children and the use of inclusive education as
an effective response:
Unit 1 Exclusion and inclusive education
Unit 2 Gender
Unit 3 HIV/AIDS
Unit 4 Minority groups - indigenous children
Module 5 Good practices
Module 5 considers the importance and value of identifying good practice in educational
interventions to prevent and eliminate child labour. It asks participants to reflect on the
characteristics of good practice by examining examples from a range of contexts, including their
own. It gives participants an opportunity to work with colleagues to plan for improvements in
practice:
Unit 1 Good practices
Unit 2 Elements of an effective strategy
Module 6 Child labour monitoring
Module 6 introduces the concept and processes of child labour monitoring. It considers the role
education can play in strengthening the monitoring of child labour:
Unit 1 Child labour monitoring

Unit 2 School-based and community monitoring
The role of the facilitator
This training manual is intended to give flexibility to the facilitator to adapt material and approaches
to different national contexts, to their own skills and knowledge, and to the composition and
learning needs of trainees.
The training sessions should not be seen as merely an opportunity for the facilitators to impart
knowledge. A major resource, if not the most important resource, is the expertise and experience of
the course participants. Training will, therefore, be greatly enriched by creating opportunities for
participants to share their expertise and experiences. Here the role of the facilitator is to provide a
framework within which productive sharing can take place.
The manual offers generic information about child labour and education. A list of resources to
support each Module is listed in annex 1. The documents listed here are available in the resource
pack that supports the manual.
This information should be supplemented by more detailed information about the national context
where training is taking place.
A number of activities are included in this manual. The facilitator is free to choose which activities to
use, or to use alternative activities. While an interactive approach is important, the needs and
characteristics of participants should determine which approaches are used. For some groups this
may mean that the main mode of interaction is discussion. For others, structured activities may
facilitate reflection and interaction more effectively.
The role of the facilitator is to:
2
• Prepare for training sessions in advance by:
o Reading unit objectives, key messages, briefing material and activities
o Organizing materials for introductory briefing sessions based on unit introductions,
including handouts as required
o Where necessary preparing supplementary information using the appended resource
materials. This will be dictated by the learning needs of the group being trained
o Where necessary, preparing supplementary information relating to the specific national
context where training is taking place. This will include relevant information about laws,
statistics, administrative structures, and so on. Additional materials may include case
studies, data sheets, power point presentations, expert speakers, handouts, video, audio
or multimedia presentations
o Preparing worksheets and display materials as required for the activities
o Contacting participants in a timely manner before training to ask them to prepare short
presentations, to facilitate discussions, as required
o Ensuring that the training venue has all the necessary equipment and facilities
• During the training the facilitator will:

o Welcome participants
o Ensure that participants understand all relevant information about the organization of the
training
o Ensure that key messages are communicated and objectives met
o Ensure that a wide range of interactive methods are used to foster the active
participation of all. Methods may include:
Individual work or thinking time
Paired work and discussions
Small group work and discussions
Plenary sessions
Role plays and simulations
Brainstorming
The regular and early use of ice-breaker and energizer activities relevant to the
theme being considered
Where a number of resource people are used, it is helpful to nominate one as the main facilitator
who will be responsible for the smooth operation of the training and will introduce the other
facilitators and the sessions they are to lead.
Where possible, facilitators should be directly involved in small group work to offer advice or
clarification relating to activities. Groups should be asked to nominate a chair and a note taker.

MODULE 1
INTRODUCING CHILD LABOUR
Unit 1: Nature, extent and causes

Unit 2: The consequences of child labour

UNIT 1: NATURE, EXTENT AND CAUSES
Facilitators notes
Objectives
• It is anticipated that by the end of the unit, participants will:

o Develop an understanding of the problem of child labour
o Be familiar with the key international conventions prohibiting child labour
o Comprehend the scale and geographical spread of the problem of child labour
o Understand the types of work undertaken by children
o Be aware of the main approaches adopted to eliminate child labour
o Understand the main causes of child labour;
o Understand the relationship between child development and child labour.
Key messages
• Child labour is a major challenge to the international community in realizing children’s rights
• Child labour is a global problem:
o There are 218 million children labourers – 166 million under 14 years old;
o Most child labour is found in the Asia-Pacific region
o Most child labour is found in agriculture
• The ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182) calls for "immediate and
effective measures to secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour as
a matter of urgency";
• The ILO Convention No. 138 (1973) on minimum age calls on states to:
o fix a minimum age for admission to work;
o abolish child labour;
o progressively raise the minimum age to the appropriate level;
• Child labour deprives children of their right to education and is harmful to their physical, moral
and mental development.
• The causes of child labour are primarily rooted in poverty, social and economic inequality,
discrimination and social exclusion;
• Cultural factors, such as attitudes towards girls in some societies, also makes for vulnerability to
child labour;
• HIV/AIDS is forcing children into the labour market;
• Lack of comprehensive child labour law enforcement and demand for child workers by
employers also contribute to the problem
Introduction for facilitator
Before starting the activities it is important to:
• Introduce yourself;
• Allow participants to introduce themselves and to describe their role;
• Outline the timetable and content of training;
• Inform participants of relevant information about the venue.
Module 1 Unit 1
1. Present the information contained in the unit.

2. Give a very brief summary ensuring that the participants understand the main elements of
each section in the unit:
a. International action against child labour;
b. Extent and distribution of child Labour;
c. The work that children do;
d. What is child labour?
e. Causes of child labour.
3. Allow time for questions and discussion.
4. Discussion should focus on elements that are of particular relevance to the national context.
Key definitions and policy instruments
Child labour is a child rights issue. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
affirms: “the right of the child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any
work that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child’s education, or to be harmful to the
child’s health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development”. ILO Conventions
complement the CRC and provide the most comprehensive and authoritative international
instruments to tackle the problem of child labour.
The ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182)
Convention No. 182 applies to everyone under the age of 18. The Convention calls for “immediate
and effective measures to secure the prohibition of the worst forms of child labour as a matter of
urgency”. The worst forms are defined as:
• All forms of slavery, or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children,
debt bondage and serfdom, as well as forced labour, including forced or compulsory
labour, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict
• The use, procurement or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of
pornography or for pornographic performances
• The use, procurement or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production
and trafficking of drugs as defined in relevant international treaties
• Work which, by its nature or circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the
health, safety or morals of children, such harmful work to be determined by national
authorities
Effective, time-bound preventative action is demanded of ratifying states, including the

identification of children at special risk taking account of the special situation of girls. Children in the
worst forms of child labour must:
• be removed and rehabilitated;
• have access to free basic education or vocational training.
ILO Recommendation 190 offers guidelines for implementing the Convention.
The ILO Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138)
ILO minimum age standards do not forbid all child work. Age appropriate work that does not affect
a child’s health and development or interfere with schooling is generally regarded as positive e.g.
helping parents care for the home and the family or earning pocket money outside of school hours
and in the school holidays is not child labour.
The ILO uses minimum age for admission to employment as a yardstick for defining and regulating
child labour. Convention No. 138 which is the most comprehensive standard in this regard as it
covers all economic sectors and all working children requires states to specify in law a minimum age
for admission to employment not less than the age of finishing compulsory education, and which in
10
any case, should not be less than 15 years. However, a Member country whose economy and
educational facilities are insufficiently developed may under certain conditions initially specify a
minimum age of 14 years. National laws or regulations may permit the employment of 13-15 year
olds in light work which is not harmful or prejudicial to school attendance. Again, the ages 12-14 can
apply for light work in countries that specify a minimum age of 14. The following table summarizes
the criteria for setting minimum ages for different types of work that show the extent to which the
Convention is a flexible instrument responsive to the different stages of development in a country:
GENERAL FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
General minimum age Not less than the end of compulsory 14 years
(Article 2) schooling,
15 years or more
Light work 13 years 12 years

(Article 7)
Dangerous work 18 years 18 years

(Article 3) (16 years under certain conditions) (16 years under certain conditions)
Extent and distribution of child Labour
Child labour is a worldwide problem and can be found in every major region of the world. Globally,
one in every six children is involved in economic activity. Most children (70 per cent) work in
agriculture and the urban informal sector where legal or regulatory protection is weak.
Asia Pacific has the highest number of working or

economically active children followed by Sub-
Saharan Africa and Latin America and the
Caribbean. Developed and transition
economies have the lowest numbers of child
workers. At 26 per cent of children below the
age of 15 working, Sub-Saharan Africa has the
highest proportion of working children by a
significant margin. In developed economies
only about 2 per cent of children were working 5% 26% 19%
in 2000. In many countries, minority groups, Latin America
such as, indigenous and tribal children, make and Sub-Saharan Asia
up a large proportion of working children, Caribbean Africa Pacific
testifying to discrimination and social exclusion.
5.7 million 49 million 122.3 million
(Source: IPEC, 2006).

The work that children do
The following ILO estimates of the scale of children’s work are for the year 2004 and relate to children
aged 5-17. It is estimated that of the 1,566 million children aged 5-17:
317 million children were working:

• 65 million were under 10 years old; This category includes most productive activities by
• 126 million were 10 -14; children and is a broader category than child labour.
• 127 million were 15-17.
218 million children were child labours: • Almost 7 out of 10 economically active children are
• 108 million were under 12 years old; engaged in child labour.
• 58 million aged 12-14; • More boys than girls are engaged in child labour
• 52 million aged 15-17. especially as the age range increases.
126 million children in hazardous work: • 40% of working children were in hazardous work;
• 40 million were under 12 years old; • 37% of child labourers under 12, and 59% aged 12-14
• 34 million were 12-14; worked in hazardous situations;
• 51 million were 15-17. • Boys outnumber girls at all ages in this category.
(Source: IPEC, 2006).
Causes of child labour
“The causes of child labour are primarily rooted in poverty created by

social and economic inequality as well as insufficient educational facilities”
(IPEC, 2002a)
Poverty
The most significant single factor in forcing children into child labour is poverty:
• Work for income may be more important to families than the alternatives;
• Poorer countries are less able to provide affordable high quality education and there may be few if
any viable alternatives to child labour;
Education
Another critical factor is the availability and quality of education:
• Many communities do not have adequate numbers of teachers or school facilities;
• Even where there are schools they may not be seen as an alternative to work because of:
associated costs;
loss of potential income;
the poor quality of education provided;
lack of relevance to current needs or future aspirations;
parents’ unfavourable perception of the value of education.
Social exclusion
• Groups already excluded from society because of cultural practices and social discrimination are
particularly vulnerable to poverty and to child labour.
• Ethnic, social and gender discrimination may be pervasive drivers leading to the tolerance of child
labour for certain segments of society.
• Discrimination and exclusion may be on the basis of ethnic origin or religion, and children from
minority groups are especially vulnerable. Moreover, most children excluded from education reside
in rural areas. Social exclusion hinders certain groups from access to quality education services
• Excluded groups may not speak the same language, or have rights to citizenship and education.
Once drawn into child labour, they are isolated and unable to communicate with the outside world.
12
HIV/AIDS Popular perceptions customs and traditions
• Before the HIV/AIDS pandemic 2% of
• Work may be seen as character building or as
children in developing countries were
good preparation for adult life.
orphans.
• A child who is expected to follow in parent’s
• In many African countries the figure is
footsteps in a trade may begin to learn and
now 7%, in some -more than 10%
practice the trade at a very early age.
• Sub-Saharan Africa has 90% of AIDS
• Traditions may push poor families into debt to pay
orphans and 40 million children will be
for social occasions or religious events and
orphaned in the next decade; HIV/AIDS
children will work to pay it back. Bonded labour is
has added 23-30% to the child labour
widespread because of the vulnerability of poor
force in Zambia
families to such pressures.
• There are 13 million AIDS orphans many
• Education for girls may be seen as less important
with a child head of household.
and they may be taken out of school at an early
OTHER SIGNIFICANT CAUSES age and put to work at home, sold into domestic
employment or the sex industry.
• Lack of comprehensive child labour Law • A “pull factor” or desire for material goods may
enforcement; be a motivation for chid labour. This may be to
• The demand from employers. improve basic quality of life or to buy status items
or clothes.
(Adapted from ILO, 2002).
Notes for the facilitator
This activity encourages participants to reflect on the assignment completed prior to the course and
on the presentations on child labour up to this point. Participants will attempt to identify common
themes that emerge from their assignments.
1. Prior to the course, participants may be requested to prepare a short summary (maximum
three pages) of the child labour situation in their country:
a. Describing how the problem of child labour affects your country or region;
b. Indicate the main causes and the main economic sectors affected
2. Participants will be placed into groups of four or five;

3. The facilitator will remind participants of the nature of their assignment and of the key points
covered during the session including: global estimates of child labour, the meaning of the
terms, work, child labour, the worst forms of child labour and the unconditional worst forms of
child labour;
4. Participants will be asked to focus on identifying common themes in their assignments by
discussing their responses to the two elements:
a. Describing how the problem of child labour affects your country or region; and
b. Indicating the main causes of child labour and the economic sectors affected
Conclusion
Ask participants to report on their discussion focussing on:

• Whether anything in the morning sessions was new to them;
• What common themes emerged in their discussion of their assignments?
Make a brief summary of the key learning points that have arisen during the activity.

UNIT 2: THE IMPACT OF CHILD LABOUR
Facilitators notes
Objectives

o Be aware of the consequences of child labour in terms of:
economic development
social development
o Understand the potential benefits of eliminating child labour
o Acknowledge the importance of political will in eliminating child labour
o Understand the impact of child labour on the wellbeing of children in:
Physical terms
Psychosocial terms;
Cognitive / Educational terms;
o Understand the challenges raised by child labourers for teachers, schools and education
systems;
o Be able to begin to develop responses to these challenges.
Key messages
• Children are the most important and valuable resource of any nation.
• Child labour contributes to poverty and underdevelopment by denying children education
and skills development needed to secure decent work and income as adults.
• Child labour is a major obstacle to national development efforts through undermining human
capital formation.
• The international standing of a country and its access to international markets can suffer
where there is an insufficient government commitment to tackling child labour.
• Projected economic benefits of eliminating child labour are enormous and outweigh the
costs by a ratio of almost 1:7.
• Countries with the highest rates of child labour often have the highest illiteracy,
unemployment and poverty rates, lowest enrolment and birth registration rates, and serious
nutritional deficiencies.
• Child labour leads to a wide range of physical, psychosocial and cognitive / educational
consequences for children:
• Physical impacts
o Children are more vulnerable than adults to workplace hazards because they are still
growing and developing
o Possible physical impacts of hazardous work include injury and deformity
• Psychosocial impacts
o Potential psychosocial consequences may include:
delayed development
insecurity
anti-social behaviour
difficulty in forming relationships
low self esteem
a sense of helplessness
apathy
anxiety or depression
14
• Cognitive / Educational impacts
o Child labour can deprive children of schooling and reduce attainment;
o Child Labour deprives children of adequate schooling leading to:
lower attendance rates at school
low academic achievement
poor learning skills
falling behind their peers
o Working children often have learning needs which are different from those of non-
working children that pose significant challenges for schools such as:
Discipline problems
Difficult to retain
Lacking in learning skills
1. Present the information contained in this unit.

2. Ask participants if they have any questions.
3. Allow time for discussion and encourage participants to consider in their national context:
a. The degree to which child labour is seen at as an economic necessity.
b. How far work towards the elimination of child labour needs to be framed in terms of
economic and social benefits, as well as human rights.
c. The level of government commitment to eliminate child labour.
4. After each section on the impacts of work for children allow time for questions and
comments.
5. Ensure that participants:
• Understand that children are more vulnerable to workplace hazards than adults, and are
at risk of developmental problems, disease, injury and death;
• Understand how many children are killed, injured and disabled at work each year;
• Are aware of the full range of psychosocial consequences of child labour;
• Understand how child labour can damage children’s cognitive abilities;
• Understand the challenges that child labourers pose to education systems in terms of
their distinct learning needs and because of teacher / pupil perceptions of them.
The consequences for society
Child labour is a consequence and a cause of poverty and underdevelopment. Children are the
most important and valuable resource of any nation. Employment of children in conditions that are
harmful to their health, development
and education, seriously undermines Table 1 6000
development prospects because of

its negative impacts on human 5000
capital formation. 4000
In many contexts, poverty creates a 3000
vicious cycle whereby it encourages 2000
child labour, high fertility rates, poor

health, inadequate education, and 1000
so on. Conversely, these factors lead 0
to increased poverty. The result is that Transitional

countries
Asia Latin Americ a
Sub-Saharan
Afric a
North Afric a and
Middle Eas t
Global
without well-focussed and direct Total Cos ts 25.6 458.8 76.6 139.5 59.7 760.3
interventions, poverty and its Total Benefits 149.8 3321.3 407.2 723.9 504.1 5106.3
correlates will become increasingly

entrenched.

Potential benefits are not merely notional. In an ILO study of the costs and benefits of eliminating
child labour by 2020, projected economic benefits outweighed the costs of fighting child labour by
a ratio of more than 6 to 1.
Table 1 illustrates regional and global costs and benefits in US$ billions. The average annual cost of
US$ 95 billion is relatively small when compared to other costs such as military spending or debt
servicing.
The most significant economic benefits derive from:

• Education – leading to “improved productivity and earning capacity”
• Health – reduction in illnesses and injuries.
Failure to tackle child labour may lead to higher levels of crime, faster spread of HIV/AIDS and
significant loss to the nation’s development potential.
Education is a fundamental human right and a social good that has a range of external social
benefits ranging from reducing fertility rates, family size, to improving health and life expectancy. The
World Bank estimates that 60-70 per cent of growth in Japan and other East Asian industrializing
countries can be ascribed to the development of human capital rather than to natural resources. It
is clear, therefore, that while child labour persists, many achievable social and economic
improvements will fail to emerge. (Source: ILO, 2003)
THE BENEFITS OF COMBATING CHILD LABOUR

Micro Level Benefits Macro Level Benefits
• Agricultural output - each year of primary schooling • Economic growth – increases with more
raised farm output by 2%; education – decreases with less;
• Entrepreneurship – four years of basic education • A one year increase in the average years
increased returns to innovation by about one third; of schooling in the workforce increases:
• Health – better diet, earlier and better diagnosis of o output per worker by 5-10%
illness; o GDP by 0.73%
• Infant and child mortality – each additional year of • Political stability and democratisation –
maternal education reduced childhood mortality broader awareness and understanding of
by about 8%; the political process;
• Birth rates – fertility rates are lower where enrolment • Effects from non-market social outcomes
rates are higher; (health, fertility reduction, democratisation
• Wages – in Latin America those who complete and human rights, inequality reduction,
primary school will earn 50%-100% more in their first environmental impact, crime reduction)
job than those who have not attended school; are estimated to account for 40% of per
each additional year of schooling adds 5-10% to capita economic growth in OECD
earnings in the informal sector and more for girls; countries. Estimates for East Asia and Latin
• Employment and employability. America are similar while the effect in Africa
should be even greater.
(Adapted from IPEC, 2003a).
Consequences for children
The physical, psychological and educational wellbeing of children can be significantly harmed by
their work. They are susceptible to all the dangers that all adult workers face. However, the effects of
hazardous work on children can be even more acute than for adults because children are still
growing and developing.
16
Child labour can be a major source of WORK RISKS FOR CHILDREN ARE INCREASED
violence against children. As the “World BY A NUMBER OF FACTORS
Report on Violence Against Children”
submitted to the United Nations • Lack of work experience
Secretary–General in October 2006 made • Learning unsafe behaviours from adults
plain, violence is a neglected aspect of • Lack of health and safety training
the child labour problem. This is largely • Inadequate, even harsh supervision
due to its invisibility as so much child • Lack of power in terms of organization and rights
labour abuse takes place in informal • Discrimination
settings. Children are frequent victims of • Lack of job security
maltreatment, physical and (Adapted from IPEC, 2006c).
psychological violence or abuse by
supervisors, co-workers and outsiders in places where they work – in factories, fields, mines and
private homes and informal settings. Adolescents who have reached the minimum working age are
also more vulnerable to workplace violence than adult workers because they may be
inexperienced and have little job security.
Physical impacts
Working children face physical hazards that vary depending on the nature of their work.
Some physical consequences of child labour can be subtle or may not emerge for many years and
are therefore difficult or impossible to quantify.
Along with construction and mining, agriculture is one of the three most dangerous sectors in which
to work for any age group. It is estimated that 173 million children work in agriculture, constituting 70
per cent of all child labourers. Table 2 illustrates some of the main hazards and physical
consequences of child labour in agriculture. Generally these hazards do not occur on their own but
in conjunction, so multiplying the possible consequences.
TABLE 2: AGRICULTURE: HAZARDS AND POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES FOR CHILDREN

HAZARDS POSSIBLE CONSEQUENCES
• Dehydration
• Long hours • Skin problems
• Physically demanding and strenuous • Harm to musculoskeletal
work development
• Fatigue • Malnutrition
• Work in extreme temperatures • Hearing problems
• Dangerous cutting tools • Poisoning
• Injury from falls and falling objects • Infection and disease
• Noise • Snake / Animal bites
• Pesticides and other toxins • Exposure to HIV/AIDS
• Wild and domestic animals • Exposure to drugs
• Farm machinery dust • Respiratory disorders
• Violence • Injury
• Sexual Abuse • Amputation
• Poor sanitation and housing • Brain damage
• Death
(Adapted from IPEC, 2006c).

Psychosocial impacts
The psychosocial consequences of child labour have been much neglected and yet are important
in determining educational outcomes for working children – how adjusted children are to schooling
and how well they do at school. Psychosocial impacts will depend on a number of factors including
the work environment, family and cultural expectations and relationships as well as the personal
resilience of the child. According to Martin Woodhead, three major principles will influence the
impact of work on the child labourer:
• Development – the place of work in the life of the child in a long term perspective in the various
phases of childhood;
• Context – work is experienced as a range of activities, relationships and settings. The
circumstance and context of work is as important as the work itself in determining the
consequences;
• Mediation – cultural beliefs and expectations will mediate the child’s conceptualization of work
and their response to it, “if children feel ashamed of having to work, this may be one of the
harmful effects of work”.
A FRAMEWORK FOR ASSESSING PSYCHOSOCIAL WELL-BEING AMONGST WORKING CHILDREN

Broad domains Major positive indicators Major negative indicators
Intelligence, cognitive, Delayed development, narrow range
Cognitive abilities and communication and practical of cognitive, technical and
cultural competencies skills, culturally – valued communication skills, maladaptive for
competencies future prospects
Secure attachments, positive Insecurity, inhibition, low social
Personal security, social
adult / peer relations, social confidence, conflictual relationships,
integration and social
integration / adjustment, moral social exclusion or rejection, deviant
competence
reasoning and behaviour or antisocial behaviour
Feelings of worthlessness, fear of
Positive self-concept, high self-
Personal identity and failure, self-denigration, negative
esteem, self-worth, personal
valuation social comparisons, shame and
pride
stigma
Self-efficacy, internal locus of Learned helplessness, external locus
control, autonomy, of control, hopelessness, apathy,
Personal agency
responsibility, positive outlook, fatalism, feelings of confusion,
motivation betrayal, abandonment
Stress, trauma, fear, anxiety,
Subjective wellbeing, stability,
Emotional and somatic depression, anger, distress, despair,
general health, growth and
expressions of wellbeing disturbed sleep and eating,
development
substance abuse, self harm
(Adapted from UCW, 2004).
Potential consequences may include delayed development, insecurity, anti social behaviour,
difficulty in forming relationships, low self esteem, a sense of helplessness, apathy anxiety and
depression.
In some situations, often in domestic work, employers have a high degree of control of children’s
daily routine and may subject children to violent abuse. In such contexts many children develop
“learned helplessness”, a condition caused by repeated negative experiences leading to stress,
anxiety and depression as well as passivity, hopelessness and fatalism. Such children often lack
initiative and motivation.
Woodhead’s framework for assessing psychosocial wellbeing amongst working children helps to
identify broad domains and specific negative impacts of child labour.
18
The negative indicators in the left hand column indicate the psychosocial issues that child workers
may have to deal with during or after their exposure to a negative work environment.
However, it is important to note that children may also be exposed to such influences (and to
violence) elsewhere, including at home, or in school.
Cognitive impacts
Cognitive ability is affected by physical and psychosocial impacts of work on children. Like physical
and psychosocial consequences, the precise cognitive consequences of work on children will
depend on a number of factors. Woodhead identifies three questions that help to determine the
degree of harm caused to cognitive ability by work:
• Which cognitive, communicative and practical competencies are essential for social
adjustment and wellbeing [in a particular society].
• How far are these encouraged, or undermined within the learning experiences provided by
work?
• How far can acquisition of these skills be assured within schooling systems realistically
available to young children?
Educational impacts
While cognitive consequences have psychosocial and cultural dimensions, they also relate more
broadly to the child’s ability to participate fully in education. Regardless of the answers to the three
questions above, a number of messages about the educational impact of labour on children are
clear. First, it is important to understand the relationship between work and school in the lives of
children. Children may be divided into four categories, those who:
• Work only
• Work and attend school
• Attend school only
• Are “idle” and neither attend neither school nor work
Second, it is clear that work competes with, rather than complements, education and schooling.
Many children who work do not attend school with any degree of regularity. The 2007 GMR cited
research (Post and Ling Pong, 2006,) indicating that paid employment after school hours reduced
pupil achievement, especially among boys.
Additionally, working children pose significant challenges for established schools. Working children
are often accustomed to a degree of independence and perhaps to having their own money –
they are often literally “streetwise”. Conversely, the “system” often views them as low status children,
as they are likely to be from marginal groups.
If the child labourers and their families see school provision as irrelevant or low quality, they may well
drop out and return to child labour. Working children are often quick to learn and may be mature
beyond their years, but they may not be good learners as schools conventionally understand that
term. Working children may not have been used to “normal” educational approaches to learning,
and may need to be taught how to learn. A combination of low quality education and work
participation poses significant educational risks for children, as the table below illustrates.

CHILD LABOUR LOW QUALITY EDUCATION
Irregular / inadequate Fewer years of

Non-enrolment Dropping out
attendance schooling
Inability to Low Lack of

Lacking in Falling behind Difficult to
read and academic educational
learning skills peers retain
write achievement opportunities
Often seen by schools as:

Having discipline A problem for Lacking learning
Low status Difficult to retain
problems teachers & peers skills
Inside the school, working children may be ignored, and it may be easier for schools to let them stay
that way rather than make particular efforts to properly integrate them. They are difficult and
perhaps expensive to integrate / reintegrate. Once in school, working children pose a whole new set
of challenges, not least how to keep them there. This requires proper support from schools to ensure
that working children are properly integrated/reintegrated in school in order to ensure they do not
drop out.
Socio-economic consequences
Children who enter work at an early age are likely to remain illiterate throughout their lives. They lack
the basic education that could help them to acquire skills and improve their own prospects. In unit 2
we identified some of the socio-economic consequences of child labour for society including
illiteracy, lower earnings, higher birth rates and a lack of choice, particularly for girls. It is important to
recognize that these also have a direct impact on child labourers. The key impact is to deprive child
labourers of opportunities to break the cycle of poverty, mainly through missed educational
opportunities.
This activity provides an opportunity for participants to consider the ways in which child labour may
be holding back development and is intended to help participants begin to frame policy arguments
in terms of social and economic benefits.
1. Distribute the worksheet “Potential benefits of eliminating child labour”. Participants will use
the sheet to record their answers during discussion
2. Facilitate a brief discussion using the following questions as a focus:
a. In your context what are the principal needs for socio-economic development?
b. Is child labour related to these development needs?
c. In what ways can child labour damage the future development of your country?
20
3. Discussion should now focus on the potential benefits that the elimination of child labour may
bring to children, society and the economy. Ask participants to identify potential benefits of
the elimination of child labour in their context for:
a. Children
b. Society
c. The economy
4. Key points of this discussion should be recorded on a computer using the template below, or
flipchart sheets.
Conclusion
The facilitator will:

• Ensure that participants understand the main benefits to society and the economy of the
elimination of child labour
• Summarize the main points of the session
Additionally, the facilitator may wish to summarize and re-write the sheets in a more coherent way
under the headings:
a. Benefits to children
b. Benefits to society
c. Benefits to the economy
The sheets may be displayed for the remainder of the training course and added to as required.
MODULE 1 UNIT 2 ACTIVITY 1 POTENTIAL BENEFITS OF ELIMINATING CHILD LABOUR
How does child labour Potential benefits of the elimination of

Economic / social child labour in your country
impact on
development needs
economic/social
in your country For the
development? For Children For Society
Economy

MODULE 2
INTERNATIONAL AND NATIONAL RESPONSES

TO CHILD LABOUR
Unit 1: The international policy framework

Unit 2: National responses
Unit 3: Responses through labour laws
Unit 4: Responses through education

UNIT 1: THE INTERNATIONAL POLICY FRAMEWORK
Facilitators notes
Objectives
• It is anticipated that by the end of this unit, participants will:
o Understand that a wide range of international initiatives and human rights standards
make up the external policy environment
o Understand that this constitutes an international policy framework within which
governments must take action
o Understand the importance of developing policy responses that facilitate integrated,
efficient and collaborative action on child labour and education
Key messages
• Child labour is an issue embraced by many international standards and initiatives. Where child
labour is not mentioned explicitly, it is often implicit. Key elements of the international framework
include: the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, ILO Conventions (particularly C138 and
C182) and the EFA Dakar Framework
• The MDGs provide a framework and compass for orienting international development efforts
and developing innovative partnerships among government and civil society organizations
• “High rates of poverty in rural areas limit educational opportunities because of demands for
children’s labour, low levels of parental education and lack of access to good quality
schooling.” (Millennium Development Goals Report 2006)
• The United Nations 2005 World Summit reiterated the “critical role of both formal and informal
education in the achievement of poverty eradication and other development goals as
envisaged in the Millennium Declaration” reaffirming the Dakar Framework for Action
• The United Nations 2005 World Summit emphasized the need to eliminate child labour and, in
particular, to implement ILO Convention 182 on its worst forms. Member States were called upon
to, “prevent the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict” and to ensure that children
involved receive appropriate education and rehabilitation.
• There is increasing coordination between the work of individual UN organizations to further the
achievement of common UN system goals, objectives and targets on child labour and
education
• It is essential to enhance partnerships and alliances among key international organizations,
agencies and donors to ensure improved coherence and effectiveness
Before beginning the activities it may be useful to summarize the key learning from module 1. This
may be accomplished by reviewing the key messages for each unit.
• Present the information on each of the elements of the international policy framework,
emphasizing the individual focus of each and the linkages to the elimination of child labour
• Ensure that participants clearly understand that many of the policy framework elements deal
with the root causes of the problem, such as poverty reduction, discrimination and education,
although child labour is not explicitly addressed. It is crucial to map at national level agencies
and groups who are active in the elimination of child labour, in order to develop close
coordination and cooperation.

Elements of the international policy framework
Global initiatives such as the MDGs and EFA as well as international human rights standards are key
elements in the external policy environment. Provisions of some human rights instruments that directly
impact child labour are summarized below:
The UN Universal Article 26

Declaration on Human
Rights Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the
elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be
compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally
available.
The UN Convention on Article 28
the Rights of the Child
recognizes the right of the child to education and requires:
• primary education compulsory and available free to all;
• development of different forms of secondary education, including
general and vocational education, available and accessible to every
child;
• measures to encourage regular attendance at schools and the
reduction of dropout rates.
Article 31
recognizes the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and
recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child
Article 32
recognizes the right of the child to be protected from economic
exploitation and from performing any work that is likely to be hazardous or
to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful to the child's health
or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development.
Article 34
protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse and
take measures to prevent:
• The inducement or coercion of a child to engage in any unlawful sexual
activity;
• The exploitative use of children in prostitution or other unlawful sexual
practices, pornographic performances and materials.
Article 35
prevent the abduction of, sale of or traffic in children for any purpose or in
any form
The International Article 26
Covenant on
Economic, Social and Primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all;
Cultural Rights Secondary education in its different forms, including technical and
vocational secondary education, shall be made generally available and
accessible to all , and in particular by the progressive introduction of free
education;
The development of a system of schools at all levels shall be actively
pursued, an adequate fellowship system shall be established, and the
material conditions of teaching staff shall be continuously improved.
26
The Millennium Development Goals
In the September 2000 Millennium Declaration 187

countries committed to making development a reality THE MILLENNIUM
for everyone and to freeing the human race from DEVELOPMENT GOALS
want through sustainable economic growth based on
human rights principles. These aims are expressed in
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and
eight development goals and associated targets and
hunger
indicators. The Poverty Reduction Strategies (PRSs) is
2. Achieve universal primary education
viewed as the roadmap to achieving the goals.
3. Promote gender equality and
empower women
The MDGs and child labour are intimately linked:
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
• They directly address poverty, the main cause of
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other
child labour.
diseases
• They directly address education, the main
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
weapon against child labour.
8. Develop a global partnership for
• They also address gender equality and HIV/AIDS –
development
significant factors in child labour.
• They also address global partnerships for development, including decent work for youth.
The 2006 progress report stated that whilst progress was being made in improving access to primary
education, there were disparities in progress, and the poorest, often those in rural areas, are being
left behind. The report stated that “High rates of poverty in rural areas limit educational opportunities
because demands for children’s labour, low levels of parental education and lack of good quality
schooling”. Moreover, by addressing poverty, lack of quality education and other causes of child
labour, the MDGs are very important in orientating international efforts which will directly impact
child labour. Conversely many of the MDGs are not realizable without an attack on child labour.
The 2005 United Nations World Summit
The 2005 United Nations World Summit held to review progress on the MDGs made a number of
important statements in regard to child labour and education. Within the framework of fair global
trade and decent work for all, world leaders emphasized the need to eliminate child labour and, in
particular, to implement ILO Convention 182 on its worst forms. Member States were also called
upon to “prevent the recruitment and use of children in armed conflict” and to ensure that children
involved receive appropriate education and rehabilitation.
The Summit reiterated and endorsed the “critical role of both formal and informal education in the
achievement of poverty eradication and other development goals as envisaged in the Millennium
Declaration”, reaffirmed the Dakar Framework for Action and support for EFA programmes as a tool
to achieve universal primary education by 2015.
Education for All: Background, Goals and Mechanisms
In the 1960s and 1970s, education topped the development agenda in many of the newly
independent countries. As Julius Nyerere of Tanzania put it: “Education is not a way of escaping
poverty. It is a way of fighting it”. At a series of regional meetings organized by UNESCO in the 1960s,
global targets were set, including universal primary education by 1980. Though there were
subsequent dramatic improvements in primary school enrolments (Africa saw a three-fold increase
between 1960 and 1980), population growth also surged and there was an economic turn down in
the 1980s. Amid this crisis in education a new initiative was taken to give new hope and vision. The
World Conference on Education for All (Jomtein, Thailand, 1990) made a commitment to make
basic education (generally considered to mean primary education) a high priority on the agenda
for development. The conference was convened by UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank
and was attended by 155 governments, as well as NGOs.

The Jomtien goals were also reflected in a succession of FA Flagship
international conferences sponsored by the UN during the first Initiatives
half of the 1990s, particularly The World Summit for Children
(1990) and the World Summit for Social Development (1995). 1. The Initiative on the Impact
The commitment to EFA was of HIV/AIDS on Education
The Dakar Framework reaffirmed at the World 2. Early Childhood Care and
Goals Education Forum (Dakar, Education
Senegal, 2000). The Dakar 3. The Right to Education for
1. Expand early childhood Framework for Action was Persons with Disabilities:
care and education adopted. It lays out six goals Towards inclusion
2. Free compulsory and a strategy for achieving 4. Education for Rural People
education of good EFA. Finance to meet EFA was 5. Education in Situations of
quality by 2015 promised both at Dakar and Emergency and Crisis
3. Promote the acquisition at a development finance 6. Focusing Resources on
of life-skills by adolescents conference held at Monterrey Effective School Health
and youth in 2002, for all countries with a (FRESH)
4. Expand adult literacy by “credible plan”. 7. Teachers and the Quality of
50% by 2015 Education
5. Eliminate gender UNESCO is the coordinating 8. United Nations Girls’
disparities by 2005 and body for EFA, facilitating Education Initiative (UNGEI)
achieve gender equality effective partnerships and 9. Literacy in the Framework
in education by 2015 monitoring progress. EFA of the United Nations
6. Enhanced educational coordination mechanisms at Literacy Decade
quality the global, regional and
national level consist of:
• High-Level Group – Key decision-makers meet once a year to sustain and accelerate
political momentum for EFA and to mobilize resources
• Working Group – Annual meeting that provides technical guidance on key issues and
recommending priorities for collective action
• Collective Consultation of NGOs – A mechanism for dialogue and joint reflection and action
with civil society, including the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) that brings together
major NGOs and teachers’ unions in over 150 countries
• E-9 Initiative – Focusing on nine high-population countries that account for more than half of
the world’s school-age children
• South-South Cooperation – promoting cooperation among developing countries of the
South, to facilitate knowledge-sharing and mutual assistance
• Regional Mechanisms – Regional and sub-regional forums
• National Mechanisms – national coordinators and forums established to promote progress
towards EFA goals at the country-level.
After Dakar a number of interagency flagship programmes and initiatives were launched or
consolidated to create synergy and to mobilize partners. These include the independent annual EFA
Global Monitoring Report (GMR). Since 2001the GMR has provided the most respected picture of
progress that countries and agencies are making towards the EFA goals. The Report includes an EFA
Development Index which measures the extent to which countries are meeting four out the six EFA
goals: primary education, adult literacy, gender parity and quality. During 2006 and 2007, UNESCO
facilitated national reviews that were the synthesized into regional reports in order that the GMR can
present a review of global progress towards EFA goals. At another level, initiatives such as the United
Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) and the World Bank’s Fast Track Initiative (FTI)
strengthening partnerships in support of EFA.
UNGEI was launched in 2000 after Dakar and is a partnership of 13 agencies to promote girls’
education both the global and national level through mainstreaming strategies, including within FTI
frameworks. The FTI launched in 2002, is a global compact between donors – who are to provide
additional policy, data, capacity-building, and financial support - and developing countries who
are to implement sound policies and accept clear accountability for results. Led by the World Bank,
FTI aims to help countries with their EFA implementation. An initial 18 countries – including 11 in Africa
– were invited to join the initiative. The aim is to have at least 60 countries benefiting from FTI by the
28
end of 2008. Each had a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) in place and an education sector
plan. Both PRSPs and FTI have consultative processes of stakeholder participation and, therefore,
provide a tailor-made opportunity for civil society engagement to get child labour and education
concerns into national education sector and poverty reduction plans. Education sector plans
whether under FTI, PRSPs or other mechanisms such as Sector-Wide Approaches (SWAPs) are a major
opportunity to mainstream child labour concerns using consultative mechanisms open to civil
society.
Since 2006, UNESCO has developed an EFA Global Action Plan (GAP) to help achieve the EFA goals.
The GAP provides a framework for greater coordination of implementation at national level. The
various EFA partnerships and initiatives that support EFA, such as UNGEI and FTI, play a crucial role in
implementing the GAP. The Plan is a response to the urgent challenges of achieving EFA and the
consequent need for a clearer understanding of the roles and responsibilities among the major
international stakeholders and clearer objectives. The Plan serves as a platform for re-invigorated
efforts on the part of all stakeholders and a framework for greater complimentary efforts at the
national level where it most matters. The focus of EFA efforts has to be a well-constructed plan for
the education sector and the engagement of all stakeholders around the plan – “one country, one
plan”.
Establishment of the Global Task Force on Child Labour and Education For All (GTF)
At the fifth EFA High-Level meeting in Beijing in November 2005, the creation of a Global Task Force
on Child Labour and Education For All (GTF) was endorsed and the GTF launched. The GTF is one of
the newest partnerships to emerge to focus collective energy on parts of the EFA agenda. The core
members of GTF are the ILO, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, the World Bank, Education International (EI)
and the Global March (GM) against Child Labour. A number of donors and countries making
progress on EFA are also represented. The ILO provides the secretariat for the GTF.
The core members of the GTF bring a particular comparative advantage to the challenge of better
integrating child labour elimination and EFA. The ILO is the leading agency in child labour and
through the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) has the largest
dedicated technical cooperation programme. UNESCO as the EFA champion provides international
leadership on policy and also monitors progress. UNICEF supports countries through a strong country
presence and champions children’s rights and gender equality. UNDP monitors progress on the
MDGs, undertakes advocacy at the global and national levels to raise awareness of development
linkages, and manages UN coordination at the country level. The World Bank is a principal source of
financial aid to education in developing countries at around $2 billion a year, with around half of this
going to basic education. The Bank leads FTI and enables EFA partners to dialogue with Ministries of
Finance through its Country Assistance Strategy (CAS). Education International is the Global Union
Federation representing the largest numbers of teachers’ organizations worldwide and has a long
record of supporting the campaign for EFA and the elimination of child labour. The Global March
against Child Labour is the major NGO focused on child labour, and its advocacy efforts at
successive UNESCO High-Level Meetings, starting at New Delhi in 2003, helped launch the GTF. GTF is
also strengthened by an existing inter-agency partnership in the field of child labour research. The
inter-agency project: Understanding Children’s Work (UCW) was launched in 2000 by the ILO, UNICEF
and the World Bank and aims to improve the knowledge base on child labour including the inter-
connections with education. The aim of the GTF is to contribute to the achievement of EFA goals
through the elimination of child labour through the optimal deployment of the comparative
advantages of each partner.
The GTF strategy is to help:
• Strengthen the knowledge base on child labour and education linkages

• Promote advocacy and social mobilization
• Provide programme support
• Promote policy coherence
• Develop partnerships

Follow-up to the world summit for children (1990)
World Declaration on the Survival, Development and Protection of Children promoted the
ratification of the CRC and set time targets for the first time on a range of child protection issues. The
Declaration was the outcome of the largest ever high-level meeting sponsored by UNICEF on
children and resulted in a plan of action that included addressing Children in Especially Difficult
Circumstances (CEDC), including child labour. Progress on the plan of action was discussed at the
Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Children (UNGASS) held at New York I in
May 2002.
Linkages
Each of the international policy framework elements described above has its own primary focus:
human rights, economic development or education. However, their concerns and implications are
very closely interrelated and in many cases, interdependent. Taken together they provide the
framework for national action on child labour and education.
Moreover, the attempt to implement international frameworks at the national level has drawn
attention to the need for effective collaboration and coordination among organizations, with each
bringing to the partnership a distinct set of capabilities, strengths and comparative advantages. For
example, the increasingly important issue of data, its quality, availability and reliability, now requires
development partners to invest jointly in this area if there is to be any meaningful tracking of
progress.
UNGASS OUTCOME DOCUMENT 2002

At the end of the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Children (UNGASS), New York,
6-10 May 2002, a resolution (A/RES/S-27/2) was adopted which included an annexed document entitled
“A World Fit for Children”. Member States reaffirmed commitments made during the World Summit for
Children in 1990 to give every child a better future and called upon all members of society to observe the
objective of eliminating worst forms of child labour (para. 7/2). Governments were urged to sign, ratify or
accede to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), its Optional Protocols, as well as
International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions No. 138 on the minimum age for admission to
employment (1973) and No. 182 on the elimination of worst forms of child labour (1999), (para. 29).
Furthermore, the document called for member States to “… protect children from all forms of economic
exploitation by mobilising national partnerships and international cooperation and improve the conditions
of children by, inter alia, providing working children with free basic education and vocational training, and
integration into the education system in every possible way, and encourage support for social and
economic policies aimed at poverty eradication and at providing families, particularly women, with
employment and income-generating opportunities”, (para. 44/36). The document very significantly also
called for the mainstreaming of child labour within development frameworks and to ensure that it was
taken up by Finance Ministers, among others.
30
International standards and major international initiatives
on child labour and education
This diagram maps the relationship between key international standards and major international
initiatives relating to child labour and education, including:
1. ILO Conventions
2. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)
3. International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR)
4. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC)
5. Millennium Development Goals (MDG)
6. Dakar Framework (DF)
Interventions in education and poverty reduction and development have a direct effect on the
causes of child labour. Conversely, development and education goals cannot be reached without
addressing child labour.
Eradicate Right to
Achieve Expand early Combat
extreme poverty education
Universal childhood HIV/AIDS
and hunger UDHR (26)
Primary care and MDG (6)
MDG (1)
Education education
MDG (2) DF (1)
Free and
compulsory
Primary education of
Education Rest and Leisure (31) good quality
CRC (28) No Hazardous Child by 2015
Labour (32) DF (2)
Protection from Sexual
Compulsory and Exploitation (34)
free education and trafficking
CESCR (13) CRC (35)
Promote
ILO Conventions acquisition of
138, 169 & 182 life-skills by
Enhance
adolescents
educational
and youth
quality
DF (6) Eliminate gender DF (3)
disparities by Expand adult
2005 and literacy by
achieve gender 50% by 2015
equality in DF (4)
education by
2015 DF (5)
Promote gender
equality and
promote women
MDG (3)

Activity 2 aims to offer an opportunity to explore the level of awareness of international standards
and initiatives relevant to the elimination of child labour and how they are related. Awareness of the
international framework is important to enable participants to understand more fully the web of
separate but related commitments that governments have made to the international community.
Participants should understand how these commitments are linked to efforts to eliminate child labour
and see ways of responding to them in a more integrated and efficient way. Later in this module,
participants will identify the national agencies responsible for implementing and monitoring progress
regarding these elements.
1. Distribute copies of worksheet “Elements of the international policy framework”;

2. Ask participants to indicate on the worksheet using a scale of 0 -5 (0 = not aware at all, 5 =
very familiar) the degree to which:
a. They are aware of each initiative / instrument
b. The degree to which they believe the initiative / instrument is relevant to their work
3. Participants should indicate how they believe initiative / instrument contributes to the
4. Allow a short period of time for discussion of the answers. Any particularly significant points
should be recorded on a flipchart.
Conclusion
The facilitator should summarize the main points raised in the activity ensuring that participants are:
• Aware of the major elements of international framework discussed

• Know how the elements of the framework are linked to the elimination of child labour
MODULE 2 UNIT 1 ACTIVITY 1

ELEMENTS OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLICY FRAMEWORK
How much do you know To what degree is the
Contribution to the
about the initiative / initiative / instrument
instrument? relevant to your work?
Millennium Development
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5
Goals
Education For All
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5
Dakar Framework Goals
EFA partnerships and
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5
initiatives e.g. UNGEI, FTI, etc.
UN Convention on the Rights
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5
of the Child
The Covenant on Economic,
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5
Social & Cultural Rights
ILO Minimum Age
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5
Convention (138)
ILO Worst Forms of Child
0 1 2 3 4 5 0 1 2 3 4 5
Labour Convention (182)
32
UNIT 2: FROM INTERNATIONAL FRAMEWORKS TO NATIONAL RESPONSES
Facilitator notes
Objectives
• It is anticipated that by the end of this unit, participants will:

o Understand that by making international commitments through ratifying international
standards, governments can get assistance from the international community in trying to
fulfilling their requirements
o Appreciate that requirements of various international obligations are the responsibility of
different Ministries and agencies and:
Often information which may be of use to other ministries and agencies is not shared
Structures and processes need to be established, therefore, to facilitate effective
cooperation and information sharing
o Acknowledge the importance of inter-agency partnerships at all levels to facilitate
coherence between child labour and other policy areas
o Develop the skills to enable them identify potential partners who are working in separate but
related areas.
Key messages
• International frameworks are put in place to provide a platform and reference point for national
action
• Governments have an obligation under international human rights law to facilitate and
safeguard the right of all children to free and compulsory education and the freedom from child
labour
• Effective national responses to child labour demand:
o The securing and sustaining of political commitment and resources at all levels
o The enhancement of partnerships and alliances within education systems, including: Ministries
of Education, education and training authorities, teacher training institutes, curriculum
development bodies, teachers’ organizations, and indigenous education authorities
o The development of inter-sectoral communication and decision making at the ministerial
level
o Enforcement apparatus including teachers, social workers, truant officers and school census
takers
o Compulsory education and child labour laws that are harmonized
o The mobilization of teachers’ organizations against child labour
o Coherence in the areas of education reform, child labour elimination, poverty reduction and
youth employment.
• Present the information contained in this unit;

• Ensure that participants understand that:
o When governments commit themselves to change, or when they make international
commitments, they give responsibility for implementation to ministries or agencies
o In order to ensure efficient and effective fulfilment of international obligations, close
collaboration and cohesive working arrangements between relevant national bodies is
essential. Child labour requires horizontal action as it is cross-cutting.

Implementation at the national Level
Governments are mandated to ensure the coherence of domestic law with certain international
standards. Typically, relevant sector ministries (Labour, Education, Women and Children’s Welfare,
etc.) are allocated responsibility for meeting international obligations. The responsible Ministry will
establish systems to disseminate information, technical assistance and financial resources. They will
also establish systems to collect and analyse data. However, government departments are
organized on a sector basis and tend to operate top-down from the centre. This can pose a major
constraint to a coherent response to child labour that necessarily has to be multi-sectoral in nature –
cross cutting various line ministries.
Unit 1 illustrates how child labour and education issues are the responsibility of different government
ministries. Related information is disseminated and data collected through quite separate structures
and mechanisms. This often means that few have a full appreciation of all the activity against child
labour. Conversely, relevant information collected through different mechanisms established by
different ministries, may never be collated and, thereby, opportunities to help child labourers are
missed. For example, Ministries of Education will have information about school enrolment,
attendance and dropout rates. The Ministry of Labour may have information about where child
labourers work. Outreach to child labourers requires that information be shared. Equally, the
effective enforcement of regulations relating to education and child labour requires effective
communication across government departments, and a system of enforcement that involves a wide
range of participants, including teachers.
In addition, Ministries of Finance, Health, Social Protection, Justice are all likely to be involved in issues
related to child labour. In fact, given the central importance of adequate financing for education, it
could be argued that the most important target for child advocates are Finance Ministries. UNICEF’s
advocacy regarding “child-friendly budgets” is a case in point. UNICEF, starting in Brazil, Ecuador
and South Africa, has examined central government budgets from a child rights and social
expenditure perspective, proposing that 20 per cent of budget expenditure in developing countries,
and indeed aid flows should be allocated to the social sector, for example education.
Finally, the role of teachers’ organizations should be recognized. They are often well positioned to
exert significant influence in policy areas.
This activity is intended to help clarify the links between international initiatives and government
responses. The activity helps participants to understand the linkages between the international
framework and national activities, and between the national and local levels.
1. Distribute copies of the worksheet “International / national linkages”;

2. Ask participants to indicate on the worksheet:
a. The extent to which the government supports, is influenced by, or acts upon each initiative /
instrument (this may mean ratification of a convention, membership of an organization, an
active supporter of an initiative, etc)
b. The agency responsible for policy areas and implementation related to each initiative /
instrument
c. The main activities that the responsible agency is engaged in at national, regional and local
levels.
3. Allow time for discussion of the answers and record significant points on a flipchart and display.
34
Conclusion
The facilitator should summarize the main points emerging from the exercise and make sure that
participants understand that when governments make international commitments, national bodies
will be responsible for implementation – that international standards and goal setting activities link to
national and local activities.

INTERNATIONAL / NATIONAL LINKAGES
To what extent does Which What activities is

the Government agency in the responsible agency
participate? your engaged in?
(eg Ratified / country is
Member / Active responsible regional / local
national level?
supporter etc) level
ILO Convention
No. 138
ILO Convention
No. 182
ILO Convention
No. 169
UN Convention on
the Rights of the
Child
Education For All

Partnerships
Millennium
Development Goals
and PRSPs

UNIT 3: RESPONSES THROUGH NATIONAL LEGISLATION
Facilitator notes
Objectives
It is anticipated that by the end of this unit, participants will:
• Understand that a strong and coherent legal framework incorporating appropriate labour
laws and the right to free compulsory education is an essential element of efforts to promote
education and discourage child labour
• Understand nature of the challenge of reviewing and reforming the legislative framework
• Know about a range of policy options which may be used to secure a stronger legislative
framework
• Be aware of the importance of robust enforcement mechanisms
Key messages
• An effective national legislative framework must at a minimum:

o Provide for universal birth registration
o Have specified ages for free and compulsory schooling
o Have harmonized laws on ages for compulsory education and the minimum age of entry
into the labour market, in accordance with ILO standards
o Have labour laws consistent with ILO standards on child labour
• Present the material in this unit

• Discussion should focus on ensuring that participants understand that ratification of
international standards is a useful point for starting the process of legislative review and
reform. Participants should also appreciate the breadth of possible legislative interventions
and that there are key interventions which are particularly important in promoting education
and eliminating child labour
• Draw participants attention to the fact that legislation is often a blunt tool and can have
unexpected consequences. Ask if they can give examples of this from their own experience
• Highlight the importance of effective enforcement of existing legislation. Ask participants to
consider what makes enforcement effective and how it can be made more effective
Legislative framework
Unit 1 identified the main initiatives against child labour and unit 2 mapped the linkages between
international and national action. In this unit the focus is on identifying possible policy options that
encourage education and discourage child labour. One of the most significant ways to promote
sustainable change is to mainstream child labour issues in education at all levels. Reform of national
legislation can be a crucially important.
Legal review and reform
International Labour Standards should inform the process of review and reform of legislation. The ILO
has considerable experience in assisting countries to draft model legislation and guidelines for
enforcement. The legal reform process includes:
36
• Consolidating and harmonizing disparate laws concerning
children Review and Reform
• Expanding coverage of the law of
• Increasing penalties and providing compensation for child Legal System
victims
Æ
Legal instruments that While this process is wide ranging and Review and Reform
may need reform beyond the scope of this manual, there of
• The Constitution are a number of measures that are of Enforcement Procedures
• Penal laws particular importance. An effective
Æ
• Labour and process of review and reform will ensure
employment laws that legislation establishes in accordance Mobilization
(including those with ILO Minimum Age Convention No. and
concerning 138 (1973) and ILO Convention No. 182 on Training
occupational health the Worst Forms of Child Labour.
Æ
and safety and labour
Harmonized legal ages for schooling and Ratification
inspection)
employment are of particular importance of
• Education laws
and this has been the policy of the ILO International Conventions
• Family and childcare
laws (including since 1921. Where this is achieved, the
marriage and effect is mutually reinforcing since both schools and labour inspectors
adoption) should be concerned about the whereabouts of the child.
• Customary laws
• Welfare laws
• a legal minimum age for employment;
• Laws of compensation
• the harmonization of legal ages for compulsory schooling and
• Evidence and
employment;
procedure laws
• determines work that is likely to harm the health, safety or morals
• Administrative laws
of children.
• Laws governing birth
registration, (No. 182, 1999).
international
movement,
cooperation and
assistance
(IPEC, 2003C).
Other core labour standards must be considered as they provide the supportive context for child
labour action, particularly by trade unions. Freedom of Association is particularly central because
child labour flourishes precisely in those environments were trade unions are weak – Agriculture and
the urban informal sector. The core labour standards that need to be considered are:
• Discrimination at work
• Forced labour
• Minimum wages
• Health and safety standards
• Freedom of association
There has been an ongoing debate concerning the importance of legislation in the fight against
child labour - about its sometimes unexpected and unintended consequences. But if legislation is
not sufficient in reducing child labour it is certainly necessary.
Enforcement
The enforcement of child labour related laws is often difficult especially where there is not an
effective and universal birth registration system and where the labour inspectorate is poorly
resourced. Additionally, many child labourers work in remote or inaccessible rural areas, in private

homes or in hidden workplaces that are not easily amenable to inspection. Where resources are
very limited and inspectors’ salaries are low, corruption may also be a problem.
Long and extensive experience has shown that it is much more difficult to successfully remove child
labourers from work than it is to ensure their presence in school. Compulsory education laws are
often easier to enforce than labour laws. Effective enforcement will depend on multi-sectoral
cooperation, especially between education and labour inspectors.
Mobilization and training
Once the legal framework and enforcement procedures have been reviewed and reformed,
various actors must be mobilized to learn how to apply the new provisions. This involves:
• Publicising new laws
• Training relevant law enforcement and judicial professionals
• Awareness raising for children, their families and groups directly concerned by child labour
It also involves developing child labour monitoring systems that capitalize on the competencies and
experience of labour inspection and allow for expanding and intensifying observation of child labour
to areas beyond the traditional scope of work of the labour inspectorate. An important focus for this
will be breaking down the isolation of schools from other actors and creating collaborative school
based monitoring systems. This is taken up in more detail in module 6.
38
UNIT 4: RESPONSES THROUGH EDUCATION
Facilitator notes
This unit focuses on the specific role of the education system in contributing to the elimination of
child labour.
Objectives
• It is anticipated that by the end of this Unit, participants will:

o Understand the central role of education in addressing child labour
o Understand the connections between quality in education and the elimination of child
labour
o Be able to identify the key challenges posed to education systems by child labour
o Develop the skills necessary to identify the central elements of education policy necessary or
desirable to effectively address child labour issues
o Understand the specific education needs of vulnerable groups, such as indigenous children
o Develop their expertise in strategic planning for mainstreaming child labour
Key messages
• EFA and child labour goals are interlinked and mutually supportive
• Sound educational policies backed by political will and adequate resources can lead to a
dramatic reduction in child labour
• The promotion of free universal compulsory basic education is the single most effective way to
address the issue of child labour, it:
o Is a critical preventive measure
o Creates a wider protective environment for children
o Creates developmental opportunities
• The art and practice of linking educational policy with child labour policy remains in its infancy
• Specific education strategies are needed to reach the large numbers of working children
• Inclusive education strategies are needed for indigenous children and other vulnerable groups
• Education itself – low quality schools, with sometimes abusive teachers – can be equally
detrimental to children as many forms of child labour
• The achievement of universal education is fundamentally dependant on the quality of
education
• Quality education requires a policy framework that:
o Ensures the relevance of education by placing learners at the heart of the teaching /
learning process
o Prioritizes teachers – their status and conditions - as central to improvements in quality
o Creates an enabling framework encouraging teachers to establish a holistic and inclusive
learning environment
o Facilitates the transition of working children from work to school
• Present the information on the educational responses to child labour through education
• Ensure that participants understand:
o The interconnections between child labour and education goals
o The relevant elements of the EFA framework
o The link between education quality and child labour
o The main elements of a framework for quality in education.

Responses through education
The international goals relating to child labour elimination and EFA are intimately linked. National
education policies that are backed by political will and adequate resources can lead to a very
dramatic reduction in child labour. It is clear that the promotion of free, universal and compulsory
basic education is the single most effective way to address child labour by acting as a preventive
and protective measure. In many countries, coherence between child labour laws and education
laws does not yet exist. Specific education strategies are needed to reach the large numbers of
working children. At the national level there is, therefore, the possibility of developing powerful and
mutually reinforcing partnerships to address child labour and education goals. Without such
partnerships, reaching EFA goals and eliminating child labour will be impossible.
Current educational practices are often not conducive to providing the support necessary for
integrating and maintaining working children in the school system. Such support remains dependent
on creating an education system that is inclusive. Education policy must attack general weaknesses
of the education system that lead parents to choose work over education for their girls and boys.
Such weaknesses include: the cost of education, its relevance to the daily lives and future
employment opportunities of girls and boys, too few schools, especially in rural areas, poor facilities
and teaching materials, and an inadequate teaching force.
EFA framework
EFA sets several key goals that, while not focussed on child labour, will have a very significant impact
on efforts to eliminate child labour. The most relevant goals are:
• Expand early childhood care and education

• Free compulsory education of good quality for all by 2015
• Promote the acquisition of life-skills by adolescents and youth
• Enhanced educational quality.
These goals are explored in detail in the following sections. Policy options that address the child
labour dimension of each of these goals will be considered in the next module.
1. Expand early childhood care and education

The first EFA goal calls on countries to expand and improve comprehensive early childhood
education and care (ECCE). The 2007 EFA GMR defines ECCE as activities which support “children’s
survival, growth, development and learning – including health, nutrition and hygiene, and cognitive,
social, physical and emotional development – from birth to entry into primary school in formal,
informal and non-formal settings.” ECCE programmes target two distinct groups of children: those
under three years of age, and pre-primary age children. They include diverse arrangements, from
parenting programmes to community-based childcare, centre-based provision and formal pre-
primary education, often in schools.
Investment in ECCE yields very high economic returns, offsetting disadvantage and inequality,
especially for children from poor families. This intervention particularly helps establish the rhythm of
schooling. It is more cost effective to institute preventive measures at this stage than to compensate
for disadvantage as they grow older. Early childhood is a time of remarkable brain development
that lays the foundation for later learning. ECCE provision improves performance in the first years of
primary school and contributes to meeting the Millennium Development Goals, especially reducing
poverty as well as education and health goals.
ECCE is recognized as a right in the CRC. While ECCE data collection is generally inadequate to
monitor progress fully in developing countries, enrolment in pre-primary education has tripled since
1974 and has risen sharply since Dakar, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, and South
and West Asia. However, coverage remains very low in most of the developing world and nearly half
40
of all countries have no formal ECCE programmes for under 3-s. The children most likely to benefit
from ECCE – those exposed to malnutrition and preventable diseases - are the least likely to be
enrolled. Children from poorer and rural households and those socially excluded (e.g. lacking birth
certificates) have significantly less access than those from richer and urban households. Typically
ECCE staff has minimal education and training and are poorly paid.
Affordable, reliable ECCE programmes provide essential support for working parents. They can
reduce cost burdens on households and may relieve older children of caring for younger siblings
allowing them to enrol in school or to devote more time to school.
(This section is adapted from UNESCO, 2007)
2. Free compulsory education of good quality by 2015

Access to quality education is a central element in working to prevent and eliminate child labour.
The 2007 EFA Global Monitoring report notes that enrolment in primary education has increased by 6
per cent since 1999 and the number of children out of school has declined. Advances were most
notable in those regions that have farthest to go to meet the goals. However, attendance remains
below enrolment and retention and completion rates are still too low in too many countries. Children
who are out of school are likely to be without a birth certificate - they are unlikely to enter school
unless new efforts are made. They are more likely to be girls, to live in a rural area and to come from
poor households. Those who have an uneducated mother are twice as likely to be out of school.
In order to make progress towards meeting the EFA goals by 2015, governments urgently need to
identify groups of children most likely never to enrol in school as well as those who drop out.
Measures to foster inclusion are also a priority and should include the abolition of school fees,
income support to poor and rural households to reduce reliance on child labour, teaching in the
mother tongue and ensuring education opportunities for disabled children and those affected by
HIV/AIDS.
There are other obstacles to meeting EFA goals. There are not enough qualified and motivated
teachers. For, example, sub-Saharan Africa needs to recruit between 2.4 and 4 million teachers.
Here and in South and West Asia there are too few women teachers to attract girls to school and
retain them. Additionally, teacher absenteeism remains a serious problem in many developing
countries. The use of low paid and unqualified “contract teachers” to respond to these concerns,
especially in parts of West and Central Africa, has been controversial. Contract teachers have
made a contribution in certain countries, providing the flexibility to meet short-term goals of quick
expansion of access and ensuring that girls, minority groups and remote populations are better
served. However, contract teachers are not a viable long-term option because of their impact on
quality and the status of teachers. The ILO and UNESCO have called for integration of contract
teachersinto the regular teaching force.
The importance of compulsory education laws should not be minimized. Roughly 85 per cent of
developing countries have compulsory education laws, but there are 25 countries that have no such
legislation. Moreover, many countries have failed to harmonize the school leaving age and the
minimum age for employment – a policy enshrined in ILO child labour standards since 1921.
3. Finding the right educational response in challenging circumstances

Matching educational responses to the varying needs of working children is a major challenge.
Many working children have had little or no formal education.
Learners may be out of school working children, or those rescued from hazardous work. There will be
a need to provide basic education or for older children some form of skills training. Often the vehicle
for the initial response to the educational needs of working children will be some form of transitional
non-formal education. The ideal option is that non-formal education leads into the formal education
system, but for some children it will be a self-contained system.
Educational responses need to be nuanced and phased according to age and circumstances of
the child. For children under the minimum age of 14 or 15 years, formal schooling needs to be the

primary focus of policies and interventions, including early childhood education. As one progresses
up the age range, at 14-18 years, vocational education and skills training can be envisaged.
4. Enhanced educational quality

Quality matters. While the connection between child labour and educational quality may not be as
obvious as with the other goals, the connections are real and important. The EFA movement (also FTI
and UNGEI) has encouraged
attempts to define educational Managerial and
quality and to find ways to Administrative
promote national education System
policies that will foster quality.
In the past, quality was often What the Learner

judged by measuring financial and Implementation brings
of Good Resources
other inputs. Increasingly, the term
relates to educational outputs. It is Policies
Seeks
seen as a dynamic concept, as out Processes
education faces new challenges, Learners
the concept of quality evolves.
Learning
The EFA 2005 GMR identified three
principles that increasingly define
quality:
• Relevance to the modern Content Environment

world and to social and
values dimensions of
leaning; Means to Supportive
• Greater equity of access Measure Learning Legislative
and outcome Outcomes Framework
• Observance of individual
rights.
UNESCO (2004) proposes a framework for quality in education that puts learning at the centre. “The
inputs, processes, environments and outputs that surround and foster, or hamper, learning are key”.
They affect learning at two levels:
• the level of the learner
• the level of the system.
UNESCO is particularly concerned about five elements of quality at each level:
At the level of the learner:
1. Seeking out learners – securing availability without discrimination by reaching out to those
currently excluded including the rural poor, girls and working children.
2. What the learner brings – must be considered if the learner is to be an active participant in
the learning process. They may have had good early childhood education, or may bring
work skills, traumatic experiences or hunger.
3. Content – must be relevant to the needs of the learner and of society.
4. Processes – of learning, including how learners learn and how groups and individuals are
treated.
5. The learning environment – requires adequate hygiene and sanitation, promotion of physical
and mental health, safety and security, freedom from discrimination and corporal
punishment.
42
At the level of the system:
1. Managerial and administrative structure and processes – the culture of the education system
must be fair, transparent, learner-centred and supportive of effective learning. For example,
“timetables must be flexible enough to be able to keep children at risk from dropping out or
otherwise losing their right to education”.
2. Implementation of good policies – developing policies in a consultative way and developing
mechanisms to ensure that policies are understood and can be enforced.
3. Appropriate legislative framework – to ensure that agreed principles contained in the right to
education can be put into action, for example, to place an obligation on the state to
provide education for all.
4. Resources – to ensure that adequate human, time and financial resources are available in
the long term to meet commitments such as the free compulsory education as well as other
aspects of quality like seeking out learners. Additionally, in many contexts, the working
conditions of teachers need to be addressed urgently – poor pay, poor management, poor
training, inadequate teaching facilities, materials and equipment all contribute to a
demoralized and de-motivated workforce.
5. Measurement of learning outcomes – in terms of knowledge, values, skills, and behaviours to
offer a way of continually enhancing the quality of education.
These elements of a Child-friendly education system precisely address many of the challenges
raised for education by working children.
However, greater attention needs to be given to the importance of child labour trends in education
in terms of:
1. Withdrawing children form work and placing them into the classroom and ensure their
retention and academic success
2. Keeping children in the classroom who are at risk of dropping out.
Promoting quality
The EFA GMR uses multiple indicators to measure key enabling factors that promote effective
learning in schools. These include: education expenditure, teacher qualifications, deployment and
availability, teacher pupil ratios, and increasingly, learning outcomes. The increased emphasis on
learning outcomes reflects UNESCO and World Bank Independent Evaluation Group (2006) findings
that countries have prioritized enrolment but have placed much less emphasis on learning.
EFA GLOBAL MONITORING REPORT 2007

PROGRESS IN QUALITY CONCERN ABOUT QUALITY
• Pupil/Teacher ratios improved slightly in • Pupil teacher ratios remain above 40:1 in 28
every region except South and West Asia countries
• Developing countries’ commitment to • There are too few teachers to meet UPE goal
monitoring quality is rising and improve P/T ratios
o Increased number of national learning • High proportion of teachers are untrained and
assessments unqualified
o Increased participation in international • Teacher absenteeism remains a serious problem
and regional assessments • Students from poor households perform less well
Key factors at the level of the learner which contribute to successful learning have been identified
as:
• Socio-economic status – those with higher status tend to perform better
• Status as immigrant or native – major disparity between first generation immigrant and
native-born children in many countries
• Language and family structure – students who speak the test language at home score
significantly higher in maths and literacy. There is also a significant achievement gap
between those who live in a two-parent family home and those who do not

• Paid employment – after school activities involving paid employment reduce pupil
achievement in maths and science, especially among boys
Key factors at the level of the system include numbers and quality of teaching staff – recruitment,
qualifications, effective training and deployment. Teachers are at the heart of the quality debate. In
the face of growing teacher shortages measures are needed to train and reward them to an
acceptable level and to properly involve and consult their organizations in the design and
implementation of educational reforms.
The 1966 ILO/UNESCO Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers provides a basis for
addressing many of these issues. It recognises that quality education is heavily dependant on having
sufficient numbers of adequately qualified and trained teachers working in conditions that facilitate
effective teaching and learning. It was designed as an international frame of reference and as a
basis for national laws or practices relating to teachers and education.
(Adapted from the EFA Global Monitoring Report, UNESCO, 2007.)
1966 ILO/UNESCO RECOMMENDATION ON THE STATUS OF TEACHERS
Some Key Recommendations:
12 To meet this need, educational authorities should provide adequate inducements to prepare
for teaching and sufficient places in appropriate institutions.
13 Completion of an approved course in an appropriate teacher-preparation institution should
be required of all persons entering the profession.
85 Since the teacher is a valuable specialist his work should be so organized and assisted as to
avoid waste of his time and energy.
86 Class size should be such as to permit the teacher to give the pupils individual attention. From
time to time provision may be made for small group or even individual instruction for such
purposes as remedial work, and on occasion for large group instruction employing audio-visual
aids;
115 Teachers' salaries should:
(a) reflect the importance to society of the teaching function and hence the importance of
teachers as well as the responsibilities of all kinds which fall upon them from the time of their
entry into the service;
(b) compare favourably with salaries paid in other occupations requiring similar or equivalent
qualifications.
This Activity aims to develop the participants understanding of the linkages between educational
quality and the issue of child labour so that they can identify areas of national education policy
which already address the educational needs of child labourers and areas which need to be
reinforced. Additionally, the activity encourages participants to begin to address the financial,
human resource, and other requirements necessary to effectively promote education quality.
1. Use the following questions to stimulate discussion:

a. What aspects of the framework relate directly to the needs of child labourers?
b. What aspects of the framework are already being addressed in the education
system?
c. What aspects of the framework need to be enhanced or integrated into the national
education policy framework if child labour issues are to be addressed more
effectively?
d. What are the financial, human resource, or other requirements for developing the
education system along the lines proposed?
44
2. Participants may use a copy of the worksheet “Child labour and quality education” to make
notes before or during the discussion.
Conclusion
The facilitator will ensure that participants understand the connections between quality education
and child labour issues and the key areas of education policy which need to be developed or
enhanced to address child labour issues more effectively.

CHILD LABOUR AND QUALITY EDUCATION
Relevant to child Resource
Being done Needs to be done
labour? implications
1. Content - nature
of the curriculum
2. Processes of
learning
3. The learning
environment of the
school
4. Teachers’ status
and conditions

MODULE 3
POLICY OPTIONS
Unit 1: Removing barriers to education

UNIT 1: REMOVING BARRIERS TO EDUCATION
Facilitator notes
Objectives

• Understand that a variety of policy options may be required to deal with the complex
problem of child labour and education
• Know that a range of proven policy options exist to improve access and equity
• Understand that a complementary approach involving various school and non-school based
stakeholders might be required to formulate policy options
• Be more aware of the obstacles to schooling that poor families face, including costs
• Appreciate the importance of helping parents to understand the costs of child labour and
the benefits on education
• Have developed a plan to remove barriers to education in their own context
Key messages
• Poor parents do value education but in many cases face considerable constraints in
responding to this commitment
• Policy initiatives must promote a strong legislative framework and remove the barriers which
prevent children from attending school
• Education is at the heart of an effective policy framework, but it must also connect with
other policy areas, such as poverty reduction, labour, health, and social welfare
• A menu of strategies to tackle child labour through education should focus on the links
between access and quality, and on the provision of additional supportive services
• The costs of education are often seen by parents to outweigh the benefits. Direct costs of
schooling to families must be eliminated as far as possible
• Barriers of cost can be removed by compensating parents through conditional cash and
non-cash transfer programmes, school feeding programmes, etc.
• Parents may need to be educated about the costs of child labour and the benefits of
education
• Present the information in the introduction to this unit

• Ensure that participants know that:
o Children work instead of attending school because of barriers often relating to access,
cost, quality and relevance
o There is a range of tried and tested policy options available to address these barriers
o This module attempts to map some policy options aimed at eliminating child labour and
promoting education
o Direct and indirect costs associated with schooling are likely to have a negative impact
on enrolment, attendance and participation in child labour, particularly in the poorest
communities
o Each policy option has a cost attached
o Many of the options have direct impacts on the welfare of working children, enrolment
and attendance rates, levels of poverty in households and communities and the future
prospects of working children
o The costs involved mean that benefits should be carefully targeted to those in most
need. The local community may well be able to help identify those in most need
o Parents and households need help to find alternative sources of income to replace
income lost because the child is no longer working
(Parts of this module have been adapted from “Child Labour, Education and Children’s Rights”
Betcherman, G et. al., 2004))

Introduction
Child labour is a cutting-cutting problem but governments are organized vertically into ministries
such as education and health. These ministries are responsible for a particular sector and tend to
operate top-down from the centre with little regard to related ministries. It is very challenging,
therefore, to manage the necessary sector connections horizontally across all levels - from local
administration, through to national line ministries. The main issue is one of responsibility, as elements
of the problem fall under the portfolio of various line ministries, including labour, education, social
welfare, women and children and health. Child labour is too broad and significant an issue to be
dealt with by any one institution and its resolution is critical to the work of many stakeholders. Child
labour’s cross-cutting nature necessitates the elaboration and implementation at different levels of a
“menu” of interventions, including: poverty reduction, providing support services for children and
their families, raising public awareness, and legislating on regulating child labour and introducing
compulsory education.
Mapping interventions
Transitional Education
Awareness Raising
Schooling
Social Mobilization
Rehabilitation CHILDREN FAMILIES
Youth Employment Economic Empowerment
Vocational Education Community Safety Nets

COMMUNITIES
Social Mobilization Awareness Raising

Support to Schools Education Policy
Institutional Capacity Building Institutional Capacity Building
Legal Services Registration & Protective Measures Legislation & Enforcement Labour & Social Policies
AREA-BASED PROGRAMME NATIONAL LEVEL PROGRAMME
(This section is adapted from IPEC, 2003.)
All children have a right to education. However, many barriers can be placed in the way of
exercising that right that can have a discouraging effect on poor parents who want to send their
children to school. In general, children work and do not go to school because of a combination of
factors. Incentives favour work where: schools are not available or are of poor quality; where the
direct and indirect costs of schooling is high; where parents weigh the opportunity cost of sending
their children to school; and where cultural factors discourage education, particularly at the
secondary level – a situation that commonly affects girls.
50
ECONOMIC
EDUCATION CULTURE / SOCIETY
CONSTRAINTS
Greater short-term
economic benefit of Lack of schools
Favour work for some or
work over school particularly in rural
all children
especially if direct costs areas
are high
family need for child’s Work is held to be more
income because of Poor quality schools appropriate for some or
extreme poverty all children
Each of these factors above operate at a variety levels.

Ä The Child
A coherent policy framework is required to provide for
action at each level. Each level will require a different Ä Household / Parents
approach dependant on particular circumstances.
Ä Employers / Unions
Timeframes for action will vary, some issues may be
addressed rapidly while others, for example, poverty Ä Society / Economy / Law
reduction, are more long-term. There needs to be a mix
of collaborative and coercive strategies aimed at making basic education compulsory, removing
barriers which prevent children from attending school, and reducing the cost of school attendance.
The 2007 GMR suggests a number of policies that have helped to tackle educational exclusion:
This unit will explore some of these policy options in more detail and will focus on the specific policy
options in the following areas:
• Removing barriers to access
• Removing barriers to quality

• Legislative framework.
Access
The 2007 GMR indicated that there has been steady but slow progress towards universal primary
education but there are still about 77 million children who are not enrolled in primary school. The vast
majority – 82 per cent – are found in rural areas. 70 per cent of these children are in sub-Saharan
Africa and South and West Asia. Many, if not most, are child labourers. Girls and children from rural
areas are less likely to be enrolled: 55 per cent of children not enrolled in primary school are girls;
enrolment rates in rural areas are often half of urban rates.
Household decisions about education and child labour are often related to long-term chronic
poverty or short-term economic shocks caused by a bad harvest and the impact of the AIDS
pandemic, for example that make them insecure and risk-adverse.
In general, children do not attend school

In general, children work because of poverty and:
because of poverty and:
• Income generated is needed by their household
• Work is considered normal or beneficial for the • The costs of education are too high
child • The benefits of education are not
• It is considered possible or desirable to combine perceived to outweigh the costs
work and school
The aim of policy in this area is to give parents / households choices that enable them to stop their
children working and to send them to school by developing policies that remove economic
insecurity from poor people that forces them to use the labour of their children rather than sending
them to school.
This can be approached at different levels, from the macro-economic to the individual level. Macro-
economic options aim to reduce poverty, often through promoting sustainable economic growth,
through decent work by improving adult employment and wages, reducing income inequality,
creating social safety nets and social insurance schemes. By offering increased access to insurance
and credit, parents may be given new ways to manage risk.
Education costs. Governments need to invest in education and eliminate direct costs that are
particularly discouraging for the poor. There is a lack of consensus concerning the appropriate level
of government financing of education. According to Katarina Tomasevski (2003) recommendations
converge on around 5-7 per cent of Gross National Product (GNP). In 2000 the ILO adopted a
recommendation of 6 per cent of GNP devoted to education. This figure emerged out of a high
profile independent International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century chaired by
Jacques Delors that reported to UNESCO in 1996. Other criteria include the proportion of the budget
that should be devoted to education, with the FTI suggesting a benchmark figure of 20 per cent.
The direct and indirect costs of education to families are often a significant barrier to access. A
range of policy options are often used to address barriers related to cost:
POLICY OPTIONS TO REDUCE BARRIERS TO EDUCATION – COST

POLICY OPTION
Free and universal This is a key goal for the elimination of child labour and relates directly to
compulsory education the EFA goal of universal primary education. As countries work towards
linked to the minimum universal primary education and secondary education a range of other
working age policy options may be employed.
52
Perhaps the simplest and most obvious way to reduce the direct cost of
School-fee abolition schooling to households is to abolish school fees. This measure will facilitate
enrolment and encourage attendance.
Other costs associated with school attendance such as uniform, school
School supplies supplies and textbook purchase can be a significant burden, especially on
provision the poorest of families. Again reducing or removing the cost of these items
to households by subsidy can have a significant impact on enrolment.
The provision of free school meals or of a regular allowance of food
conditional on school attendance can have multiple benefits. Again, costs
to households are reduced. Food acts as a direct incentive to both parents
and children. It may also raise the quality of nutrition children are receiving
Conditional non-cash
thereby promoting health and reducing the risk of short term economic
transfers
shocks which may cause children to drop out of school.
Other non-cash subsidies are also possible and can include the provision of
health and other services.
Conditional transfers may be offered along side or independently from non-
cash transfers. They operate in a similar way offering cash in return for
school attendance. They can be an effective way of reducing household
Conditional cash
poverty and child labour. They can play a significant role in removing cost
transfers
related barriers to education and can boost enrolment and attendance.
Where appropriate, or where resources are scarce, a more limited cash
transfer scheme may be offered to individual children as a scholarship.
The removal of these barriers can result in a significant financial burden on government particularly
in developing countries. The introduction of such schemes may necessitate a review of the entire
education budget to ensure that an appropriate proportion is devoted to measures designed to
achieve universal primary education and to build-up secondary education as a consequence of
this. Effective targeting of limited resources is critical to the success of these initiatives. Criteria and
mechanisms will need to be established to ensure that most resources are targeted at the poorest
and most vulnerable in society. While this may be done by central government, responsibility may be
shared right down to the local community level where communities themselves determine who is
most in need.
The School Fees Abolition Initiative (SFAI) was launched by UNICEF and the World Bank in 2005 as
part of an overall EFA strategy. Free schooling may be the single most important policy measure to
dramatically transform school enrolment. The Initiative aims to learn from the experience of the
impact of school fee abolition and how countries cope with the fallout in terms of increased pressure
on schools particularly on secondary school once universal primary education has been achieved,
and to use this knowledge as the basis of providing guidance and support to selected countries. A
number of sub-Saharan African countries have already been through the challenging process of
abolishing school fees: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania.
Making education part of the solution
Economic-related barriers to education are highly significant in many contexts. However there is a
range of other barriers that relate to the education system itself:

POLICY OPTION
Build more schools / create
alternative facilities
Ensure adequate sanitary Improvement of access may require infrastructure development
facilities but creative and flexible planning can offer alternatives. Flexible
scheduling may allow “double-shift” schools which make more
Flexibility to allow for efficient use of facilities and may actually better match the
patterns of life in terms of needs of families.
IMPROVE ACCESS
the curriculum and

scheduling the school day
and year
Eliminate discrimination Schools must be perceived as safe spaces, free from physical
and promote inclusion danger and other more subtle hazards. Discrimination against
working children and marginalized groups is a major cause of
Improve school safety exclusion and dropout.
If schools are to contribute to the elimination of child labour and

Develop out reach to the achievement of EFA goals, they must reach out to children
programmes not currently in school, to those who have or are in danger of
dropping out.
By providing ancillary services, schools can add significant value

to their existing provision, reduce cost burdens on households
and protect the health and wellbeing of children. Provision of
ADDITIONAL SERVICES
preschool care may relieve older children of caring for younger

siblings, especially girls, and allow them to enrol in school or
Provide preschool care, devote more time to school.
school feeding and health
care programmes Provision of healthcare and feeding programmes may offer
services not otherwise available and make school a community
focus encouraging enrolment and attendance. Children are
likely to have better long-term health and will be better
protected from short-term economic shocks that can lead them
to leave school and enter work.
Quality
Quantity and quality in education are linked. Once more children are enrolled in school the pressure
builds to improve quality to keep them there. However, for many children, once enrolled, their
experience is one of failure leading to drop out, entry into the labour market and perhaps
exploitation. Often young people fail to complete one phase of education and make the transition
to the next. According to the 2006 EFA GMR, in about one-third of countries providing data, more
than one-third of children enrolled in primary education fail to reach the last grade of primary
schooling.
Child-friendly focus
Given this context, policy options should focus on issues of access and quality linkages in education.
The goal is to move towards universal, free primary education by creating an enabling environment
in which children are more likely to enrol, and continue to attend school. This strategy will require the
selection of a number of policy options that will often
happen simultaneously. These policy options will Academic Success
include working with partners to create systems to Retention
identify at risk and out of school children; developing Enrolment
Outreach
Identification
54
outreach programmes to promote enrolment; creating an educational environment that will
encourage children to stay in school and which enable them to enjoy academic success.
A fundamental challenge for schools is to make themselves more attractive and friendly to all
children and to child labourers, in particular, working girls. Such “child-friendly schools” will be
sensitive and responsive to the needs and interests of real children in the actual circumstances of
their lives. In many contexts, this approach is alien to established patterns of working and interaction
with young people. The challenge of progress towards “child-friendly” schools and education
systems should not be underestimated and can only be met by planned system wide policy
change.
Policy options to improve incentives in favour of education
Policy options to improve incentives for children to attend school may usefully be considered under
three headings: access, quality and additional services.
BARRIERS TO EDUCATION – QUALITY AND RELEVANCE
Lack of quality and relevance Policy options
• Lack of support systems, facilities,

materials for children • Increase support systems for children, NFE
• Low status and inadequate conditions approaches (e.g. deal with differential learning
of work for teachers paces, psycho-social counselling)
• Lack of sensitivity of educational • Improve status and conditions of teachers
authorities and teachers to working • Incorporate information about local value and
children culture in the curriculum
• Curriculum detached from local values • Incorporate information about child labour,
and aspirations of working children gender, HIV/AIDs and vocational areas in the
• Curriculum inadequate to prepare curriculum
students for gainful skilled employment
Educating the community
Within the broad context of action against child labour, schools are particularly well placed to
adopt an enhanced role in educating and engaging the support of parents. Workshops, adult
education classes and parent teacher associations all offer opportunities to develop parents’
awareness of:
• The dangers and disadvantages of child labour

• The benefits of education for their children, for their community and wider society
• The social impacts on heath, in fertility rates and increase in girl’s life chances
This provides additional incentives for parents to send their children to school rather than to work and
offers the possibility of building a broad local consensus against child labour. Education of parents is
particularly effective in relation to girls since educated parents are much more likely to send their
daughters to school than uneducated parents.
The removal of a child from work and enrolment in school has indirect costs to families as well as
direct costs. Where a child receives income for their work, the family will be deprived of that income.
This is called opportunity costs. This too can be a barrier to enrolment. Since the aim of policy in this
area is to give parents / households incentives that enable them to stop their children working and
to send them to school it is important to help families overcome this obstacle. Schools can have a
role in offsetting that income loss to encourage enrolment and retention in school. Initiatives can
take the form of skills training for parents of children attending school or a mid-day meal. Typically,
training will focus on the development of new vocational or business skills to open alternative
income generating opportunities.

Economic incentives - The Progresa programme in Mexico
Progresa is a major programme in Mexico aimed at reducing poverty and developing the human
capital of poor households. The programme provides monetary transfers to families that are
contingent upon their children’s regular attendance at school between the third grade of primary
and the third grade of secondary school who do not miss more than a threshold number of school
days in a single month.
It effectively subsidises education, health care, and nutrition for poor rural households, aiming to
break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. Benefit levels are intended to offset the opportunity
costs of not sending children to school and increase by grade level in school, recognising that the
opportunity cost of children’s time increases as they grow older. To ensure the gender lags in
secondary enrolments are reversed, it offers higher transfers for girls than boys attending secondary
school.
Evaluation of the programme indicates that it has significantly increased the enrolment of boys and
girls, particularly of girls, and at the secondary level. This implies that children will have an average of
0.7 years of extra schooling because of Progresa, and this effect may increase if children are more
likely to go to senior high school as a result of the programme.
(Adapted from Betcherman et al, 2004)
This activity aims to map policy initiatives in the participant’s context. The main focus of the exercise
is on formal education, non-formal education, vocational skills and training and education in rural
contexts. Participants are asked to identify existing initiatives and the approaches that are being
used. In each case issues or challenges as well as opportunities will be identified.
1. For this activity, participants will work in groups of three or four

2. Distribute a copy of the worksheet “Policy options” to each participant
3. Explain that the worksheet aims to aid the participants in mapping existing policy initiatives in
their own context in each of the four areas listed on the sheet. Explain that in each case they
are to identify a policy initiative from their own context, describe the approach that the
initiative took, the issues and challenges that arose, and any opportunities for improvement
4. Participants complete the matrix
Conclusion
Time should be given for feedback from each group. This should be seen as an opportunity for
participants to share their own experience and expertise. Following information sharing, it may be
possible to identify common elements of effective practice, or of difficulty. These common elements
should be noted, and where opportunities arise in other modules, they may me investigated further.
56
MODULE 3: POLICY OPTIONS
Unit 1 Activity 1
EXISTING INITIATIVES APPROACH CHALLENGES/ISSUES OPPORTUNITIES
Formal
Education
Non Formal
Education
Vocational
and Skills
Training
Rural

MODULE 4
AREAS FOR SPECIAL ATTENTION
Unit 1: Exclusion and inclusive education

Unit 2: Gender
Unit 3: HIV/AIDS
Unit 4: Minority groups – Indigenous children

UNIT 1: EXCLUSION AND INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
Facilitator notes
Objectives
• Understand that some groups of children:

o Are particularly vulnerable to educational exclusion and child labour because of a
variety of factors including gender, ethnicity, religion and region
o Have very specific needs which must be addressed in order to promote education for all
and the elimination of child labour
• Appreciate that inclusive education offers approaches which:
o Takes seriously the diverse needs of all learners
o Challenges education systems to change to meet those needs
• Understand the key elements of inclusive education
Key messages
• Many groups of children are actively or passively excluded from education

• The Dakar Framework underlines the need for all countries to promote an inclusive learning
environment
• Education systems must reach out to all children, whatever their circumstances, gender,
religion or culture
• Inclusion means the recognition and acceptance of the differences between all children,
and using this to positively promote education for all
Present the information in this unit on exclusion and inclusive education

Ensure that participants know that:
• Certain groups of children are particularly vulnerable to educational exclusion and to child
labour
• That this module will focus on exclusion related to:
o Gender;
o HIV/AIDS;
o Minority status e.g. indigenous children
• Exclusion from education is a failure to provide access to quality education
• Exclusion may result from a combination of the following:
o A lack of resources
o A failure to understand the needs of particular groups of children
o Discrimination.
• Inclusive education is a response to diversity which sees the education system as the problem
rather than the child
• Inclusive education has an important role to play in eliminating child labour by encouraging
education systems and schools to address the specific needs of all children, especially those
who are out of school, or who are particularly vulnerable to child labour.

Exclusion
Many groups of children engaged in or at risk of child labour are actively or passively excluded from
the education system. However, there are some groups of children who are at greater risk of
exclusion for a variety of reasons, including: gender, geographical location, ethnicity, and religion.
Particular attention needs to be paid to these children, as the challenge and cost of reaching them
is even greater. The at-risk groups include:
• Minority populations, such as indigenous and tribal peoples, pastoral communities and
others, who often face significant discrimination in terms of services and programmes and
who can be located in extremely remote rural areas
• Children affected or infected by HIV/AIDS, particularly AIDS orphans who very often find
themselves taking on the early responsibility of head of household following the death of
parents and other family members. They often suffer stigmatization, discrimination and the
reality that they often have to work to feed, clothe and care for younger siblings
• Children of migrant families who are highly mobile in their search for work
• Street children who may have migrated from rural to urban areas
• Children who are trafficked for purposes of labour, or commercial sexual exploitation, and
child domestic workers
• Children who have been withdrawn from involvement in armed conflict
There are many other groups of children who are victims of social exclusion and discrimination
because of gender, religion, ethnicity, caste or other cultural factors sustained through uninformed
social attitudes and behaviour. This module explores some of the specific needs of these children
and possible responses to them. It focuses on exclusion related to:
• Gender
• HIV/AIDS
• Minority status e.g. indigenous children.
Exclusion from education is often the result of a number of factors operating at different levels of
society and the economy and which are manifested through discrimination in education provision.
Access is often linked to the availability of resources. Typically, providing access to education is more
difficult in remote rural areas. Additionally, some groups of children may be perceived as being a
low priority, unsuited or unsuitable for education, too poor to meet the indirect costs of education or
belong to groups that are marginalized from the wider society.
Even where educational access is available the dynamic of exclusion may still be strong. Exclusion
may result from a failure to understand that children from particular groups may have particular
needs which, if not met, exclude children from school. For example, some cultures do not allow girls
to attend class with boys; where only mixed classes are available, girls are effectively excluded.
Some children become heads of household because of the illness or death of parents and are likely
to find participation in schooling difficult or impossible. In other cases, children may belong to groups
that are hated, feared or marginalized by the societies in which they live. Children who belong to
households affected by HIV/AIDS may be perceived as morally suspect or as a health risk. Teachers
may reflect negative social attitudes in their dealings with certain children perceived as problematic
and, again, effectively exclude them through their discriminatory treatment of them.
If education really is for all, the specific needs of at-risk groups must be directly addressed in a
systematic and comprehensive way. An important approach in addressing these needs is through
inclusive education.
62
Inclusive education
“All children and young people of the world, with their individual strengths
and weaknesses, with all their hopes and expectations, have the right to
education. It is not our education systems that have a right to certain types
of children. Therefore it is the school system of a country that must be
adjusted to meet the needs of children”
(B. Lindqvist, UN-Rapporteur, 1994)
Inclusive education has its origins in special education but is now viewed as of mainstream
relevance for education in general.
The Salamanca Statement and

INCLUSIVE EDUCATION
Framework for Action, (UNESCO,
1994) focuses on inclusive Inclusive education is a strategy contributing towards the
education and affirms the principle ultimate goal of promoting an inclusive society, one which
that schools should enables all children / adults, whatever their gender, age,
“accommodate all children ability, ethnicity, impairment or HIV status to participate in and
regardless of their physical, contribute to that society. Difference is respected and valued.
intellectual, social and emotional, Discrimination and prejudice will be actively combated in
linguistic or other conditions”. policies, institutions and behaviour. Education is the right of all
children, and inclusive education aims to ensure that all
Inclusive education begins with an children have access to an appropriate, relevant, affordable
acknowledgement of diversity and and effective education within their community.
a commitment to transform
education in response to the Inclusive education is concerned with removing all barriers to
diverse needs and abilities of learning, and with the participation of all learners vulnerable
children. to exclusion. It is a strategic approach designed to facilitate
learning success for all children.
This approach operates from the
premise that the education system (IPEC, 2005)
is the problem, not the child.
NEEDS SPECIAL ENVIRONMENT RIGID METHOD &CURRICULUM
Does not respond Cannot get to school Teachers’ attitude Inaccessible
Child as System
Has special needs the Many drop-outs as the Teachers &
Cannot learn
problem problem schools not
supported
Parents not involved
Is different from others Needs special teachers
Lack of teaching aids
Poor quality training and resources
UNESCO (2005) has identified four elements of inclusive education, it is:

• concerned with the identification and removal of barriers to participation in education;
• about the presence, participation and achievement of all students and;
• involves a particular emphasis on those groups of learners who may be at risk of
marginalization, exclusion or underachievement.
These principles should apply to the whole education system as it is simply good practice. The move
towards inclusive education will be gradual, but offers the possibility of improvement through an
examination of the education system to see how it can better serve the needs, including the

learning needs, of all children. It is an enterprise that requires considerable flexibility and involves all
levels of the education system and stakeholders in building consensus and commitment to change.
The concept and practice of inclusive education challenges schools and education systems to
become more aware of the needs of children who are currently not at school and are child
labourers or are at special risk of becoming child labourers. There is no one approach to including all
groups, the needs and situation of each group will be different. Inclusive education is increasingly
seen as a cost effective approach which aims to improve education, improve the learning
environment, create a context where educational success is open to all, and to do so for all
learners, not only the excluded. It also offers the possibility of bringing more children into education
and keeping them out of child labour.
Activity 1 helps participants to identify groups in their own context that are at particular risk of
exclusion from education and of becoming child labourers. The barriers to education will be
identified. Participants will consider the degree to which these children are perceived as a
“problem” and how far the education system is trying to identify and respond to their specific needs.
1. The facilitator displays a large version of worksheet 1 “Diversity and Inclusion” and explains
that the whole group will begin by identifying categories of children who are currently at risk
of exclusion from educational provision in the participants’ context. At this stage, as many
categories as possible should be identified
2. The facilitator will select a number of the categories which have been identified – these
should not include gender, HIV/AIDS victims, or indigenous children
3. Participants are divided into groups of 5-6 and each group will choose a category on which
they will focus and a copy of worksheet 1 will be distributed to each group
4. Groups will write the name of their category in large letters in the outer circle and then add
any details that they can, for example, the size of the category, geographical location,
ethnicity, religion, social status, and so on
5. In the next circle they should write any barriers to education that their category of children
may experience. This should include barriers at the level of the individual, family, community,
schools, society, and policy as appropriate
6. In the next circle the group will write any existing actions or responses which have already
been used or are currently being used
7. The next circle is for any needs that the category of children has which are currently being
unmet
8. The central circle is for suggestions as to how the education system at all levels could
respond more effectively to this particular category of children. The facilitator should
encourage participants to focus on inclusive education principles
Conclusion
All worksheets should be displayed and groups given an opportunity to report their findings. The
facilitator should ensure that participants understand the principles of inclusive education and that
they have applied these during the exercise. To reinforce this, questions should be raised about the
degree to which each category of children is perceived by the education system as a problem to
be solved, and to what degree the education system is challenged to better meet the needs of all
children. It is also useful to consider whether all excluded groups have been addressed and whether
participants are surprised at the range of groups at risk of exclusion. Finally, it is important to ask
participants how widely inclusive education principles are used in the education system and how far
they are likely to be supported.
64
Module 4 Unit 1 Worksheet 1 Diversity and Inclusion
Group:
Barriers to
Education
Existing
Responses
In School Legal
Unmet
Needs
Steps to
Inclusion
Social / Education
Cultural Policy

UNIT 2: GENDER
Facilitator notes
Objectives

• Appreciate that girls and boys often have different experiences of education and work
• Understand the significance of gender in educational exclusion and child labour
• Be aware of the importance of including a gender dimension in all interventions, especially
those related to education and child labour
• Understand some of the key approaches to addressing the gender dimension
Key messages
• Due to deeply rooted patriarchal values and norms, the girl child in many parts of the world
faces discrimination from the earliest stages of life
• Millions of children are excluded from schooling, particularly girls, because of customary
attitudes, lack of facilities, child labour and gender inequalities
• Achieving gender equality is not a “women’s concern” but is the responsibility of all society
• Gender equality needs to be addressed in all programmes and at all stages of the
programming cycle
• Gender specific measures such as the recruitment of more female teachers are needed in
case of pronounced inequalities
Present the information in this unit. Ensure that participants are aware that girls often have different
experiences of education and work than boys because of cultural traditions and parental concern
for the safety of girls. Participants should understand that gender equality is an important focus of
the Dakar Framework and the MDGs and that it is a UN system-wide priority. They should be aware of
the UN programme specifically focused on girls’ education (UNGEI) and of key strategies to address
gender inequality at the classroom and policy levels. They should be familiar with the term “gender
mainstreaming” and understand the importance of collecting accurate disaggregated data on
gender, education and child labour.
Gender
As a result of gender roles attributed to children by

the society, there are differences in the work and GIRLS IN EDUCATION
educational experiences of boys and girls and
these differences should be fully and concretely • Girl’s primary enrolments have risen
taken into account in policy and programme sharply especially in some of the lowest
development. In work situations, boys and girls often income countries of sub-Saharan Africa
face different health and moral risks. Therefore, and South and West Asia;
when taking rehabilitative and preventative • 55% of out-of-school children are girls;
measures these differences should be recognized in • The EFA 2005 gender parity target has
order to provide them with the services relevant to been missed by at least 94 countries;
their life experiences. There are also differences in • 86 countries are at risk of not achieving
the educational experiences of boys and girls, the 2005 gender parity target even by
which demand different approaches when 2015.
developing education policy and programmes. (EFA Global Monitoring Report, UNESCO, 2007).
66
Child labour, gender and education
GIRLS OUT OF SCHOOL: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

“There is not…in Manchester or Salford a single free school for girls of the working class. In a poor
family with three or four children, of course the boys get preference. It is a general feeling that as the
boy has to go out and wrestle for his life with the world, education is far more necessary for him than
for his sister…Whatever justice there may be in this instinctive feeling, in a town like Manchester the
neglected education of girls is fraught with disastrous consequences…The children grow up inured
to rages and neglect. As soon as they can be made to earn something they are sent out – the
girls…follow the mother’s footsteps – only each generation sinks into a lower degree of wretchedness
and vice. In numerous instances, virtue is lost before it is known what virtue is.
(Edward Brotherton, The Manchester Guardian, January 16, 1864)
(Source: The International Guardian, January 16, 2007.
Girls and boys have very different experiences of

GENDER RELATED GOALS
education and child labour child labour. This arises in
Education For All part from the different expectations that many parents
and societies have of boys and girls. Often, boys and
“2. Ensuring that by 2015 all children, girls are expected to follow the example set by their
particularly girls, children in difficult father and mother and so engage in different types of
circumstances and those belonging activity, even at work. While both boys and girls are
to ethnic minorities, have access to found working for the family in the field and at home, in
a complete free and compulsory small restaurants, in factories or on the street, boys are
primary education of good quality; often found to work in male-dominated sectors such as
5. Eliminating gender disparities in mining and fishery, and girls in typically female-
primary and secondary education dominated sectors including garment production, and
by 2005, and achieving gender services such as domestic work, and work in the
equality in education by 2015, with entertainment industry.
a focus on ensuring girls’ full and
equal access to and achievement In many families and societies boys are still
in basic education of good quality.” favoured over girls. Poor parents often invest more in
their sons and tend to put their daughters to work to
Millennium Development Goals help look after the basic family needs. Even in cases
where girls are given the opportunity to study, they
“3. Promote Gender equality and often learn that being a boy is better and worth more
empower women – equal access to than being a girl. In many cultures, girls internalize this
primary and post-primary attitude that often makes them shy and less assertive
education for girls.” than boys. This results in their growing up to be women
with greater constraints and fewer opportunities. In turn they are less able to influence the lives of
their daughters, thereby perpetuating the cycle of exclusion from education, poverty and
exploitation from one generation of women to another.

GIRLS AND EDUCATION IN THE ASIA-PACIFIC REGION
While some areas of the Asia-Pacific region have had a strong record of girls in school,
others lag behind. This poses a serious challenge for the region to achieve Education for
All (EFA) by 2015 as it has already missed the 2005 gender parity target in education.
Often when faced with limited resources and competing financial demands, parents
prefer to invest in the education of their sons. They often view their daughters’ education
as not “cost effective” in those countries where early marriages prevail. Tradition and
culture may give women low status and limited opportunities for decent paid work. This
too discourages education, especially if the quality of education is poor, grades low or
the curriculum deemed irrelevant to girls’ futures. A girl trapped in child labour
contributes to a vicious cycle, eventually preventing her from giving her own family a
good start in life and slowing economic growth and social development of the country
as a whole.
(Adapted from UNESCO, 2006).
In general, and even among working children, girls have less education than boys. This is often
because of:
• Cultural traditions – e.g. girls are not allowed to attend classes with boys
• Distance of school from home
• Parental concerns about safety at and on the way to and from school
• Parental need for help at home with household chores
• Early marriage
Key principles and strategies for promoting gender equality in programmes against
child labour
Attempts to reduce poverty, to discourage

child labour and to encourage education GENDER MAINSTREAMING
all have the potential to make a positive
impact on girls however some specific issues • The process of assessing the implications for
must be addressed in order to promote women and men of any planned action,
gender equality. A number of broad including legislation, policies or programmes, in
principles that are relevant to education any area and at all levels;
can be identified: • A strategy for making the concerns and
1. Achieving gender equality is not a experiences of women as well as men an
“women’s concern” but the integral part of the design, implementation,
responsibility of all society monitoring and evaluation of policies and
2. Promoting gender equality will programmes in all political, economic and
benefit all society societal spheres, so that women and men
3. Gender equality needs to be benefit equally, and inequality is not
addressed in all development perpetuated;
programmes and at all stages of the • The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.
programming cycle
4. Gender specific measures are (IPEC, 2003b).
needed in case of pronounced
inequalities
5. Adopt a multi-level approach addressing practical and strategic gender needs
68
Strategic level
Part of the international

GETTING GIRLS OUT OF WORK AND INTO SCHOOL framework is UNGEI. Following
Dakar, 13 agencies formed this
UNGEI has recently identified a number of priority areas in the initiative in the EFA spirit to mount
Asia-Pacific Region: a “sustained campaign to
• Research and data collection improve the quality and
• Inter-sectoral planning and joint development of indicators availability of girls’ education”
for monitoring and evaluation that works at both the global
• Access, quality and learning achievement for the girl child and country levels. UNICEF has
labourer called for a national ethos of “no
• Status and working conditions of teachers – encourage girl out of school” to be created.
women teachers especially in rural and remote areas and In its 2004 State of the World’s
train male teachers. Children report, UNICEF put
• Vocational and skills training forward a seven-step plan of
• Knowledge management: good and bad practices action to respond to the “silent
• Integrate the concerns of working girls into the agenda for emergency” of girls out of
EFA and inclusive education school.
• Mainstreaming working girls’ concerns into advocacy efforts
• Taking a holistic approach considering the family and There are many interventions
economic context of working girls that can facilitate girls’
• Political will – strong political leadership education. The key strategy in
education and other areas is
(UNESCO, 2006). gender mainstreaming which
aims to incorporate an explicit
gender dimension into all activities at all levels. A mainstreaming strategy includes: awareness and
capacity building, improving the knowledge base through gender analysis and disaggregated
data, ensuring a clear gender budgetary strategy, and ensuring that education sector plans have
an explicit gender dimension. This strategy can play a significant role with FTI frameworks in the
development of education systems, and thereby on child labour.
To operate similar strategies effectively it is important to address gender equality issues at the earliest
stages of planning and at the highest levels of decision-making. Gender needs to be addressed at
both the strategic and the practical level and both men and women need to be represented at all
levels.
In each context the specific circumstances will be different as particular cultural and economic
influences come into play. It is important, therefore, that a gender analysis is undertaken to collect
disaggregated data identifying gender differentials relevant to child labour and education. This will
facilitate the identification of needs, constraints and opportunities that boys (in many countries boys
do less well within the education system) and girls experience and in the broader social
environment. It will also include a review of the main educational institutions and mechanisms that
may help to facilitate greater gender equality, including the greater recruitment of female teachers
particularly at the secondary level.
Early childhood programmes not only prepare girls for school more effectively than boys, but they
can also free girls to attend school. Young mothers are often excluded from school, and ideally this
policy needs to be reversed, or another alterative needs to be found. Alternative educational
provision may also be needed for girls who have already dropped out of school, and for girls who
are over the age for compulsory schooling but who have not completed their schooling.
Classroom level
At the classroom level there is much that can be done to make the atmosphere more welcoming to
girls, not least the greater recruitment of female teachers. The inclusive education approach
described above is central to addressing gender issues in the classroom. To create a sustainable
change in the classroom, recruitment and training of teachers must be gender aware. Textbooks

and other teaching resources can be source of gender bias. Careful attention must be paid to the
criteria for, and selection and endorsement of textbooks, to ensure that they are free from bias.
Other classroom interventions aimed at eliminating child labour by promoting EFA have a gender
dimension that, while benefiting all children, can be of particular benefit to girls. For example,
household responsibilities are more often allocated to girls and can limit their ability to attend school,
so flexible scheduling can be of particular importance. The same is true of ensuring that instruction is
conducted in the mother tongue, since girls generally have less exposure to people beyond their
immediate family and therefore, to other languages. And particularly at the secondary level, the
greater recruitment of female teachers.
This section is adapted from Haspels, N. and Suriyasarn, B. “Promotion of gender equality in action against child
labour and trafficking: a practical guide for organizations” ( IPEC, 2003b).
70
UNIT 3: HIV/AIDS
Facilitator notes
Objectives
• Understand the scale and impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic at global and national levels
• Understand that the effects of HIV/AIDS can force children to drop out of school and into
child labour
• Know that education systems can play a significant role in preventing dropout and child
labour by:
o Raising awareness of HIV/AIDS related child labour
o Ensuring that schools are inclusive
o Providing HIV/AIDS prevention education to students, teachers and parents
o Ensuring that HIV/AIDS concerns are mainstreamed in all activities
Key messages
• HIV/AIDS is a major cause of child labour and failure to complete education

• HIV/AIDS concerns must be mainstreamed in all policies and interventions related to
education and child labour
• All teachers and officials must be trained and sensitized to the causes, consequences and
responses to HIV/AIDS and the children affected by it
• Schools must adopt inclusive education approaches to children affected by HIV/AIDS and
offer comprehensive HIV/AIDS education for all
Present the information in this unit. Ensure that participants understand the scale and the impact of
the problem on individuals and communities. They should appreciate the impact of HIV/AIDS on
children. Particular, they should understand the close linkages between HIV/AIDS, poverty, non-
attendance at school, discrimination or exclusion, and child labour.
HIV/AIDS, education and child labour
The HIV/AIDS pandemic has claimed more than 25 million lives. It is estimated that 40 million people
are currently living with HIV, and that between two and three million of them are children under 15
years of age. By 2003, 15 million children had lost one or both parents. In sub-Saharan Africa alone
there are more than 11 million AIDS orphans, and by 2010 it is anticipated that there will be 20 million
single or double orphans. Infection rates continue to rise and in 2004 alone, some 640,000 children
were infected with HIV. Girls are more likely to have HIV infection than boys and in parts of Africa
infection is up to seven times more common in girls.

25 Million
AIDS Deaths
40 Million
People living with HIV
2-3 Million
Children under 15 with HIV
15 Million
Single/double AIDS orphans
20 Million
Est. single/double AIDS orphans in 2010
10 Million 20 Million 30 Million 40 Million
Children are profoundly affected when their parents become sick and die. In addition to the
physical and emotional suffering caused to children by illness and bereavement, HIV/AIDS causes
poverty and leaves children vulnerable to a range of risks. Household income is reduced and
children may be forced leave school to take on
HIV/AIDS in Malawi adult responsibilities. The illness of a parent may
place the child in a care giving role, both to the
Malawi is one of the 15 poorest countries in the parent and to siblings. Demands on the child’s
world with the highest HIV/AIDS prevalence time may make school attendance sporadic or
rate, estimated at 14.4%. It is estimated that of impossible, particularly if schools are
the 900,000 HIV positive people, 60,000 are unsympathetic or unaware of their plight.
aged 14 and less. Annual deaths due to
HIV/AIDS are estimated at 81,000 with a The loss of one or both parents has a strong link
cumulative total of 555,000 since the first HIV to school dropout and child labour. Orphans are
case in 1985. twice as likely to work as non-orphans. Work can
become a survival strategy for children or families
(Adapted from IPEC, 2005b)
under severe pressure. Since they have lost the
protection of parents children may be forced to leave school and into the worst forms of child
labour including sexual exploitation in order to secure food, income, shelter and “protection”. The
risk of HIV/AIDS infection is thereby increased.
In addition to these direct impacts of HIV/AIDS on the family, AIDS-affected children can suffer
discrimination in the local community. They may be discriminated against in school, kept separate
from other children or even excluded because of social stigma, fears of transmission of HIV or even
because they no longer able to attend school regularly. School life may be further disrupted by the
absence of teachers due to HIV/AIDS.
Where communities severely affected by HIV/AIDS, poverty levels rise reducing families abilities to
support and educate their children and potentially increasing the demand for child labour.
Traditional support systems offered by extended families become overloaded. The combination of
poverty, exclusion, and non-attendance at school creates circumstances in which child labour and
exploitation are likely to increase. In such circumstances it is particularly appropriate that alternative
forms of income are found and that incentives are provided in return for school attendance.
72
Approaches to HIV/AIDS
• Raise awareness of HIV/AIDS

related exclusion from
education and child labour;
HIV/AIDS
• Mainstream HIV/AIDS concerns
in education and child labour
policy and interventions;
Out of
Poverty • Promote inclusive education
School
approaches to HIV/AIDS;
• Sensitise teachers and officials
to causes, consequences, and
responses to HIV/AIDS and the
Exclusion / Child children it affects;
Discrimination Labour • Provide comprehensive
HIV/AIDS education in schools
and non-formal education;
The close linkages between poverty, exclusion, non-attendance at school and child labour are
apparent. Effective responses to HIV/AIDS are, in many contexts, an essential element of strategies
to promote education and to eliminate child labour.
EFAIDS PROGRAMME
The EFAIDS programme launched in 2006 is an initiative of

Education International, WHO and EDC (Education Development
Centre). It works with teachers’ unions to promote Education For
All (EFA) at national level through involvement in policy
development. Through training it works to prevent HIV/AIDS
infection and related discrimination. It aims to:
1. Prevent new HIV infections among teachers and learners

2. Mitigate the negative effect of AIDS on achieving EFA goals
3. Increase the number of learners completing basic education.
www.ei-ie.org
In general, effective responses to HIV/AIDS will not be significantly different in nature from those
interventions that have been explored throughout this manual. Key elements of an effective
response will include raising awareness of HIV/AIDS related child labour and by mainstreaming
HIV/AIDS concerns throughout education and child labour policy and interventions.
The inclusive education approaches described in unit 1 of this module help to create a positive and
accepting atmosphere in schools but will need to be supplemented by specific training for teachers
and administrators on HIV/AIDS. In order to minimize the likelihood of discrimination or exclusion of
AIDS affected children, educators need to be aware of how the virus is, and is not, transmitted. They
must have an understanding of the ways in which HIV/AIDS can impact children, their families and
their school attendance.

HIV/AIDS child labour and education in Zambia
The Ministry of education has incorporated reproductive health information, including HIV/AIDS risk
and prevention, in school curricula at all levels. The development of training materials to prepare
teachers to deal with HIV/AIDS has been widely welcomed by NGOs working with youth and,
apparently, by parents as well.
At all levels, the Ministry of Education has appointed HIV/AIDS focal points responsible for monitoring
the implementation of Ministry policy, assessing problems, and coordinating responses.
The Ministry of Education has launched a number of initiatives addressing child labour:
• Sensitisation of all Ministry officials to the problems of child labour and child sexual exploitation;
• Updating of civics and social studies curricula to foster awareness of rights and the capacity to
recognise and resist abusive forms of labour;
Offering counselling together with formal education through a pilot “schools without walls” activity,
supported by the ILO, designed for children withdrawn from the street.
(Adapted from IPEC, 2002)
If children are to be protected from HIV infection they need accurate and comprehensive
information about HIV prevention. School curricula and non-formal education programmes may
need to be adapted to ensure that these issues are adequately dealt with. As with all education
and child labour issues, effective responses to HIV/AIDS will involve many partners at all levels.
Responses need to be robust but culturally sensitive with education as a major component.
(This section is adapted from IPEC, 2002 and IPEC, 2005b.)
74
UNIT 4: MINORITY GROUPS - INDIGENOUS CHILDREN
Facilitator notes
Objectives

• Better understand problems facing minority groups particularly indigenous communities
• Appreciate that indigenous children are less likely to be enrolled in school, to attend school,
be literate and are more likely to be child labourers
• Understand that Indigenous communities have not always had positive experiences of
schooling and education
• Be aware that indigenous communities and their children often have specific learning needs
that are not easily met by traditional educational interventions and that a sense of
community ownership, a locally adapted curriculum, and the recognition of indigenous rights
and traditions, are critical for successful interventions
Key messages
• Minority groups, particularly indigenous children, are an over-represented group among

those still to be reached by the EFA movement
• Child labour among indigenous peoples remains poorly documented
• Discrimination against indigenous children continues to exist in education systems and
practices
• Education interventions must be sympathetic to indigenous culture and designed following
the principles of inclusive education
Present the information in this unit. Ensure that the participants are aware of the fact that indigenous
children are one minority group among many worldwide and even if participants come from
countries where there are no, or very few indigenous people, they will almost certainly have other
minority groups who face similar problems e.g. the Roma in central Europe. Ensure that participants
are aware of: the size of the global indigenous population, the lack of data, patterns of social
exclusion, low enrolment and completion, and high participation in child labour. It is important that
participants appreciate that indigenous people have specific needs and that low enrolment and
attendance rates are an indication of the often irrelevance of existing education provision to their
needs. Participants should understand the main principles and some examples of good and bad
practice in responding to indigenous children’s educational needs.
This information should be supplemented by information about the indigenous population in the
national context or other minority groups. Either the facilitator may present this supplementary
information or a guest or a participant may be invited to contribute in advance. Good practice
suggests that it would be valuable to have a member of the indigenous population speak to the
group where possible. Participants should know about the size, location and culture of local
indigenous populations. They need to be aware of cultural, social and religious differences between
the indigenous population and the wider community.

Child labour, education and indigenous and tribal groups
The 250-350 million people who belong to indigenous and tribal groups worldwide are often
members of the poorest and most marginalized communities. They predominate in child labour
statistics in many countries.
In Ecuador, nine out of 10 indigenous children work compared to one out of three non-indigenous
children. A study from Bolivia indicates that children are twice as likely to work if they are indigenous.
While it is clear that many indigenous and tribal children work, it is less clear what work they do and
what conditions they work in, as few governments collect this data.
The ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (169) (see below) is the only international
instrument in this area and is a useful framework for planning and action. It has a strong focus on
both child labour and the specific challenges posed for education systems. The Convention will be
considered in more depth later.
Indigenous children are an over-represented

group among those still to be reached by the EFA KRÄTLI WRITES IN RELATION
process. Generally, they have literacy rates lower TO CERTAIN PASTORALISTS
than the national average. In some contexts,
studies have shown that enrolment and “School experience is seen as the opposite of
completion rates are significantly lower. education: children not only fail to learn how to
secure a livelihood, but lose what they were
Access to schooling is often limited for a variety of taught in early life and absorb alien and
reasons. Indigenous people often live in remote negative values and lifestyles. At school they
rural areas and may be nomadic. However, in are “softened”, humiliated, trained into
many contexts they are regarded as a low priority dependency, laziness, irresponsibility, lack of
for education, or even as a problem. Compulsory discipline and of self esteem. On the other
education laws are often not enforced in hand, they are made to believe that their
indigenous areas, schools rarely function properly school experiences raises their social status
and there are often high levels of teacher amongst non-schooled people, so that once
turnover and absenteeism. Teachers are rarely back in their communities they often become
sensitized to the particular needs of indigenous arrogant, presumptuous and disrespectful”.
children. It is clear that in many cases, failure is (Krätli, 2001 quoted in ILO, 2003a)
system failure rather than individual failure.
Indeed, dropout and failure rates might be better viewed as “rejection rates” of inappropriate
education.
While education can be a fundamental tool to empower indigenous children and their
communities, it has been, and at times still is, one of the major tools used to further marginalize
communities through policies designed to educate, proselytize, and promulgate foreign values and
“modern” knowledge. Discrimination against indigenous children continues to exist in education
systems and consequently, many educational institutions have rejected indigenous peoples, their
cultural identities and practices, thereby endangering indigenous peoples’ ways of life. In return,
some communities, parents and children are resisting educational services. In many indigenous
communities, traditional forms of education include work in the fields, forests or at sea. Practical
competencies that are learned in this way are viewed as necessary for proper socialization.
“Literacy among indigenous people involves being proficient in their own language, being able to
read and navigate in local environments, and being able to communicate…to serve their own well-
being and future. Literacy in the national language alone rarely provides this” (ILO, 2003a).
The task is not so much to convince parents about the relevance of formal education as to make
formal education relevant to the needs of children and their communities. Merely expanding non-
adapted primary education provision is likely to have a limited impact on child labour and may
result in perpetuating cycles of poverty and marginalization if it impedes traditional education more
fitted to the environment. Expanding educational provision needs to be a genuinely collaborative
and consensus building exercise involving community leaders, parents and children. Bad practices in
promoting educational inclusion include:
76
• Policy approaches that do not take into account indigenous concerns
• Arriving at education or rehabilitation solutions in consultation with government agencies,
NGOs or experts, but without consulting the indigenous communities concerned
• Relying on individual (indigenous) experts rather than transparent consultation processes with
representative institutions and leaders
• Ignoring the collective concerns of indigenous peoples that influence the situation of their
children
Again, quality and relevance in education are seen to be critical both in formal and non-formal
settings. Whether education is strictly formal or non-formal is less important than ensuring that it is
based on the following principles:
A unified government
Recognition of Locally adapted
funded education Community ownership
indigenous rights curriculum
systems
Education provided according to these principles will:
• Be designed based on community needs

• Be sympathetic to indigenous culture
• Be free of charge
• Be supported by a legal framework and effective enforcement
• Resist creating second-rate “ghettoized” indigenous education services
• Where appropriate, allow parents’ close surveillance over the physical
and moral security of children (especially girls)
• Recognize indigenous language needs using bilingual education in and
beyond primary education
• Make no attempt to “convert” or separate indigenous children from their
community
• Is highly flexible in structure and content
• Addresses the intercultural learning needs of the surrounding society
• Make best use of indigenous education resources
• Respect traditional knowledge
Developing understanding and practice
One of the key challenges is that not enough is known about child labour, or indeed education, in
indigenous communities. Child labour in indigenous communities is poorly documented and data is
generally limited, disparate and of low quality. The same is true of practice, and while progress is
being made there is a need for innovation through pilot programmes.

MODULE 5
GOOD PRACTICES
Unit 1: Good practices

Unit 2: Elements of an effective strategy

UNIT 1: GOOD PRACTICE
Facilitator notes
Objectives

• Understand the importance and value of identifying good practice in educational
interventions to prevent and eliminate child labour
• Understand the characteristics of good practice
• Develop an awareness of examples of good practice in their own and other contexts
• Have had an opportunity to work with colleagues to plan for improvements in practice
Key messages
• Good practice is any sustainable, replicable strategy that results in children being in a place
of learning rather than in a situation of labour
• Practices should be grounded in country-specific realities, whilst recognizing broader issues
that may go beyond any one specific country
• There must be a conscious and determined effort to establish effective linkages between
types of interventions as part of any coherent response to child labour
• Successful interventions often depend on the support of a broad social alliance including
government, NGOs, employers, trade unions, including teachers’ unions, etc
This Unit is been adapted from, “Emerging Good Practices in the Elimination of Child Labour and the
Achievement of Education for All” (ILO, 2005); “Education as an Intervention Strategy to Eliminate and Prevent
Child Labour” (IPEC, 2006a); and “Time-Bound Programme: Manual for Action Planning”, Book 4 (IPEC, 2003c).
This module draws on experience and expertise in using education as an intervention strategy to
eliminate and prevent child labour. There are two units focusing on:
1. Good practice
2. Elements of an effective strategy
This unit provides an important opportunity for participants to share examples of good practice from
their own contexts. While examples of good practice have been provided, it may be more useful to
concentrate on examples provided by participants.
Present the information in this unit ensuring that participants:

• Appreciate the range of interventions utilizing education as a means for tackling child labour
• Understand principles underlying good practice
• Understand the importance of learning from established good practice and using it in their
own context
• Understand that practice at each level must connect and be informed by practice at other
levels

Good practices in education to eliminate / prevent child labour
Good practice is any sustainable, replicable

CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD PRACTICE
strategy that results in children being in a place
of learning rather than in a situation of labour.
The recent inter-agency publication, “Emerging Innovative or creative
Good Practices in the Elimination of Child Labour
and the Achievement of Education for All” What is special about it that makes it of potential
observed that good practices in this context can interest to others? Note that an innovative practice
cover a wide range of activities and can be does not necessarily need to be new. For instance,
adopted at various levels, for example: an approach may have been in use for some time
at one setting but may not be widely known or
• The national or international policy levels applied elsewhere.
on child labour elimination and EFA, Effective in producing the desired result
including harmonization of national
action plans What evidence is there that the practice actually
• Networking, including among has made a difference? Can the impact of the
international agencies, as well as practice be documented in some way, through a
national bodies established to monitor formal programme evaluation or through other
child labour elimination or EFA means?
• Approaches to non-formal education Replicable
and how these work both as self-
Is this a practice that might have applicability in
contained system, where it is not be
some way to other situations or settings? Note that
possible to transition former working
a practice does not have to be copied directly to
children into formal schools, and as a
be useful to others.
transitional link between non-formal and
formal systems
(IPEC, 2003c)
• Skills training and apprenticeship
programmes, particularly for older children who may be of minimum legal working age
• Formal education systems, including developing “child friendly” learning environments, curriculum
development, teacher training, retention strategies, enrolment drives, sport and recreation, etc.
• Effective models promoting the education of girls, as a priority area
• Participation of social partners and civil society, including involving teachers’ organizations
• Social protection linked to education, such as income-generation activities, health and nutrition
• Social mobilization, including community involvement in education awareness-raising
• Community and school-based monitoring
• Targeting groups at special risk, including indigenous populations, children of migrant workers, and
trafficked children
• Early childhood education that could have a significant impact on future prevention.
The members of the Global Task Force have acquired significant experience and expertise in many of
these areas cited above. On the basis of this experience, it has been possible to highlight some key
underlying principles that characterize some of the good practices that have emerged, for example:
• Multi-sectoral approaches have a much more sustained impact in the elimination of child labour
• Education is a necessary but not a sufficient intervention. In addition to receiving education of
good quality, working children also need to benefit from a protective environment
• Child labour must be mainstreamed into PRSPs, and national education sector plans
• Partnerships within the UN system must be actively pursued and implemented
• Particular attention should be paid to the situation of girls and to the situation of other particularly
vulnerable groups
• Formal education strategies are vital to the long-term success of interventions
• Practices should be grounded in country-specific realities
There are a variety of approaches being undertaken using education as a means of combating child
labour. A “good practice” can be defined as an approach that has been tried and shown to work. It can
be practice at any level, small or large, from broad policy to grassroots level. It will have implications for
practice elsewhere. It need not be entirely successful. Often information about factors that limit
82
effectiveness can be more useful to other practitioners – after all, we learn from our mistakes. This means
being open about failure and learning from it to do better next time.
The identification of good practice aids the creation of a knowledge base. However, contexts vary and
even highly successful interventions may not “travel” well. Each intervention must be sensitively tailored to
individual contexts.
Good practice at the international and national level
At the international level, there is at times a lack of consistency and coherence across development
programmes.
At the national level, education policy is critical to the creation of an enabling environment. In policy
planning it is good practice to address:
• Parents’ decisions to choose work over school for their children

• The exclusion of certain groups of children from the education system
• The needs and expectations of working girls and boys
• The technical skills and knowledge of the education authorities
• Policy and programming linkages between the elimination of child labour, EFA, gender equality,
and social protection programmes
• The relevance of education and skills training to local labour markets
• Motivating teachers by implementing effective policies relating to conditions of employment and
training
• Patterns of social exclusion
Joint coordination mechanisms within appropriate government sectors including education, social welfare,
labour and health are valuable at all levels.
EDUCATION AS PART OF A HOLISTIC APPROACH TO TACKLING CHILD LABOUR
Holistic approaches are critical to the success and sustainability of child labour action. One such
programme that has had considerable success in brining all the different elements into a coherent whole
was a UNICEF project in Fez in Morocco. The project targeted children working in the informal sector
producing carpets, shoes, copperware, jewellery, pottery and ceramics. An estimated 30,000 children work
in small workshops in the city, often in hazardous conditions, including exposure to dangerous and toxic
substances. In this context , UNICEF launched from the late 1990s up to 2006 a major initiative with the
Moroccan government and with the close collaboration of the ILO. Education was one of the main pillars
of the project. One of the most successful elements of the project was the successful integration of former
child labourers into formal schooling and collaboration between several ministries, including labour,
employment, education and health.
Involving children as key stakeholders
The Global March has developed an innovative concept to promote children’s participation in India. The
“Child-friendly Village” or “Bal Mitra Village” concept promotes child participation to encourage the
holistic development of children and the community. A child-friendly village is a village where all children in
the 6-14 age group go to school and the village is made child labour free. Child participation is
encouraged by conducting democratic elections to form children’s parliaments that work closely with
adult leaders on the village advisory committee. This goes hand-in-hand with data collection on children
and withdrawal from workplaces. In addition, parents are supported in the enrolment of their children in
school along with the sensitization of teachers.
(Source: IPEC, 2006a)

An example of good practice principles: Social mobilization
SOME MOBILIZATION STRATEGIES Social or cultural attitudes and influences may endorse
the practice of child labour or underestimate the
• Awareness raising importance of education especially for girls and
• Advocacy / lobbying marginalized groups. It is important to present an
• Developing partnerships and accurate picture of:
networks • The short and long term cost of child labour to
• Research (policy / advocacy children and to society
orientated research) and • The short and long term benefits of education
dissemination to children and to society
• Consultation
• Capacity building / skills training / Social mobilization aims to raise awareness of these
education issues and to encourage the development of attitudes
• Policy development and and actions that will that will promote education and
coordination discourage child labour.
• Including working children and their
parents / Parent teacher associations
Why mobilize?
Social mobilization aims to create a broad alliance of civil society organizations, including
employers’ and workers’ organizations. This is essential for effective impact. Civil society partners are
often in a better position to increase public awareness, and thereby influence prevailing decision
makers and help to change social attitudes and practices. Where government is unable to act,
perhaps because of political or bureaucratic constraints, civil society is in a powerful position to
lobby, encourage and persuade stakeholders to enable governments to act.
Strategies for social mobilization must be tailored to suit the needs of target groups. There are several
types of social mobilization:
• Mobilization of different sectors of society: government, trade unions, businesses, the media,
NGOs, religious groups, teacher associations, working children, etc
• Mobilization of celebrities and high-profile supporters whose support helps influence public
opinion
• Participation in programmes
Teachers’ organizations are key actors in education policy reform. They can help to define a role for
teachers as educational professionals, trade union members and members of civil society. Practical
action by teachers’ organizations may focus on: the quality of education, the learning environment,
improvement of working conditions, teachers’ attitudes and behaviour, and addressing shortage of
teachers.
The media, can play a role in highlighting violations of child labour law and in spreading information
about “good practices” for prevention and reintegration of child labourers.
Employers and trade unions can be instrumental in identifying precisely where working children are,
and in taking direct action to eliminate child labour in specific industries.
In addition, children, families, and communities play an essential part in raising awareness.
84
CASE EXAMPLE: SCREAM – Supporting Children's Rights through Education, the Arts and the Media
SCREAM is an education and social mobilization resource developed by IPEC to promote

understanding and awareness of child labour among young people. It aims to empower individuals,
to stimulate creativity, participation and expression of ideas and feelings. It encourages them to
become advocates for social justice in their own community by providing them with tools, skills and
confidence.
SCREAM’s innovative strategy uses creative art and a participatory approach to educate young
people and mobilise communities around child labour issues. The resource package is modular and
creatively designed. It is highly adaptable and a facilitator can select and combine various
elements to suit each group, making it attractive for use contexts around the world. Artistic output is
limited only by the creativity of the young people.
(Adapted from IPEC, 2006a)

UNIT 2: DEVELOPING AN EFFECTIVE STRATEGY
Facilitator notes
Objectives

• Understand the importance of establishing effective strategies
• Know how to identify the elements of an effective strategy in education and child labour
• Be aware of a range of effective strategies for using education and skills training as a key
strategy in eliminating child labour
• Consider ways in which strategic approaches in their own context could be more effective
Key messages
Good practice in supporting direct action for the elimination of child labour through education
requires:
• Support for the enrolment and retention of working children and children at risk in formal and
non-formal education
• Taking into account the diversity of children’s needs
• Development and reinforcement of support systems to help working children and their
families
• The use of unconventional approaches and focused efforts to reach working, vulnerable,
and excluded children
• Work through multiple entry points
• The reinforcement of efforts to improve and increase education for girls
• The promotion of school and community based child labour monitoring
• The involvement of teachers and their representative organizations
• The promotion of child participation in decisions affecting their future
• Present the information in this unit focussing on the importance of creating an enabling
environment for approaches at all levels that work towards the elimination of child labour.
• Ensure that participants:
o Understand the relationship between policy, strategy and direct action
o Appreciate the challenges that the problem of child labour poses for strategy
development
o Are familiar with the characteristics and principles underpinning effective strategies
This unit is adapted from: “Emerging Good Practices in the Elimination of Child
Labour and the Achievement of Education for All” (ILO, 2005); and “Time-Bound
Programme: Manual for Action Planning”, Book 4 (IPEC, 2003c).
86
Introduction
This unit focuses on interventions that create an enabling environment for educational action
against child labour.
A strategy is a long-term plan of Policy

action designed to facilitate the
effective and implementation of
policy. The recognition and ⇓
replication of effective strategies
are important parts of good
strategic planning. In the context Strategy
of child labour, “any sustainable,
replicable strategy that results in
children being in a place of ⇓
learning rather than a situation
of labour” may be regarded as
effective. Action
Elements of an effective strategy:
• Enable the efficient allocation and use of resources through, in part, effective partnerships
• Facilitate integrated and comprehensive planning and action
• Foster sustainable change
• Require close cooperation between central government, civil society and international
agencies
• Programmes that enhance the knowledge base on child labour and education
Effective strategies
A variety of approaches are being undertaken using education as a means of combating child
labour. The identification of effective strategies in these areas will aid the creation of a knowledge
base that can assist field practitioners, policy makers, and organizations.
“Emerging Good Practices in the Elimination of Child Labour and the Achievement of Education for
All” produced by the Global Task Force began to identify a range of effective strategies. These
include:
Develop and enhance the capacities of key

Create an enabling environment, including
stakeholders to contribute meaningfully to the
through policy development and reform and the
elimination and prevention of child labour and
creation and enhancement of networks,
the achievement of Education For All, including
partnerships and alliances of government bodies,
teachers and their organizations, and to the
civil society, agencies and international
development of school- and community-based
organizations.
child labour monitoring systems.
Strengthen knowledge and understanding of the Create support networks that provide a wide
problem of child labour and feed into the range of assistance, including social protection
improvement of formal and non-formal education and health, to working children, children at risk
systems and skills training programmes. and their families and communities.

Engage key stakeholders and civil society through Address the special situation of children at great
social mobilization programmes and activities risk, including minorities, children affected or
which will be developed on the basis of improved infected by HIV/AIDS, children of migrant families,
knowledge and understanding and promoted street children, trafficked children and children in
through emerging national networks. armed conflict.
Reform and adapt formal education systems and

Address the particular needs and expectations of
structures to accommodate the needs,
older children through skills/ livelihood training,
expectations and aspirations of working children
and pre-vocational training for younger children.
and children at risk.
Develop or reinforce non-formal education Reinforce efforts to improve and increase

approaches, including life skills training. education for girls.
Support the meaningful participation of children in programmes and activities that have a direct
impact on their lives and future.
In some of these areas, initial attempts have been made to identify emerging effective strategies.
These are listed below:
EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES THAT SUPPORT THE CREATION OF AN ENABLING ENVIRONMENT
• Address deficiencies in education systems that exclude children or encourage non-

attendance e.g. access, quality, relevance to local needs, facilities, teaching materials,
Policy enforcement of compulsory education legislation
development • Build capacity of education authorities to understand and address child labour;
and reform • Integrate a child labour perspective at all levels
• Identify and use the linkages between child labour EFA, gender equality, social
protection programmes and vocational training
• Train key personnel at all levels

• Secure adequate financial resources for education
Building the
• Produce and disseminate resource materials
capacities of
• Raise awareness about child labour
Ministries of
• Raise awareness about links between child labour and educational attainment, EFA,
Education
poverty reduction strategies and social exclusion
and
• Motivate decision-makers to tackle issues posed by child labour
education
• Mainstream child labour elimination strategies within existing pre and in-service training
authorities
for teachers to increase the attendance, retention and academic performance levels
of working children
Developing or • Build broad based networks:

strengthening o Bringing together government, civil society, international agencies and
national representative actors
networks on o Ensuring that disparate actors, who might no otherwise be connected, are
child labour, included, e.g., Ministries of Education, Social Welfare and Health
education o To share information
and social o To promote coherence between activities
exclusion o To foster effective collaborative working partnerships
88
EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES THAT SUPPORT THE CREATION OF AN ENABLING ENVIRONMENT
• Provide training on:

o The role of teachers and schools in addressing child labour
o How discriminatory attitudes increase dropout rates. The attitude of teachers is a
Curriculum major “push” factor for children who leave school to work
development • Develop modules on social justice, children’s rights and child labour for inclusion in the
and training curriculum
of teachers • Work with Ministries of Education and curriculum developers to ensure the relevance of
curriculum to working children and children at risk, e.g. through components on personal
and social development or pre-vocational skills
• Develop school planning to accommodate children working in rural areas
Strengthening • Engage in policy dialogue, networking and alliance building, joint activities and sharing
cooperation of experiences within the international community to raise awareness of child labourers
within the UN who are members of social sub-groups excluded on the basis of language, culture or
system and ethnicity
the • Develop a stronger focus on child labour in national policies and strategies on education
international and poverty reduction, including PRSPs and Country Assistance Strategies (CAS) through
community dialogue and joint action with international partners
• Continue the collection, analysis and dissemination of data on the correlation between
child labour and education where knowledge gaps remain, e.g.:
o how education can impact upon the prevalence of child labour
Consolidating
o the effect of exploitative work on the learning capacities and needs of children
and
how to address the special needs and expectations of working children through
strengthening
education
the
o the integration of inclusive education approaches in education systems
knowledge
• Obtain more accurate data and identify, analyze, document and disseminate good
base
practices that address exclusion mechanisms that encourage children to work rather
than go to school and that use basic education creatively and effectively to address
their needs
Engaging key
• Engage and support civil society partners with existing experience in social mobilization
stakeholders
through technical and financial assistance
and civil
• Encourage civil society partners such as teacher’s organizations, communities, families,
society
parents and children to develop strategies enabling them to exert greater influence on
through social
stakeholders at all levels and to participate in change processes
mobilization

Case examples of effective strategies
Integration of working children in primary education in Turkey
In a joint project with the Turkish Ministry of Education, IPEC helped to build the capacities of ministry
staff to contribute to effective, sustainable solutions to the child labour problem. In doing so, the
project fostered government ownership of an education agenda that addressed the needs of
working children. At the central level, it concentrated on strengthening the capacity of the Ministry
of Education to manage and provide technical support to activities at the provincial level, including
the provision of training aimed at upgrading the skills of teachers. These efforts were complemented
by capacity-building activities within national-level structures for the development and
implementation of effective model educational programmes. To achieve these objectives, IPEC
focused on establishing an effective partnership with the Ministry of Education and, in collaboration
with the education authorities, worked with a wide range of partners in the education environment,
including teachers, educational personnel, counsellors, school principals and inspectors. As part of
the capacity-building process, a core group of 30 trainers was identified to act as a catalyst for
change within the education system. At the outset, in-depth research was carried out on education
and the problem of child labour in Turkey, which formed the knowledge base for devising strategies
and policies.
The programme also involved other relevant line ministries and institutions to ensure a more effective
multi-sectoral approach. As a result, the programme was able to significantly improve the
attendance, performance and retention in primary school of working children or children at risk
through educational and psychological assistance.
(Source: ILO, 2005).
90
MODULE 6
CHILD LABOUR MONITORING AND

MONITORING PROGRESS IN EDUCATION
Unit 1: Child labour monitoring

Unit 2: School-based monitoring
Unit 3: Harmonizing education and child
labour monitoring

UNIT 1: CHILD LABOUR MONITORING
Facilitator notes
Objectives

o Understand the concept of child labour monitoring, including its:
Aims and objectives
Approaches
Implementation
Key messages
• Child labour monitoring involves repeated direct observations to:

o Identify child labourers and to determine risks to which they are exposed;
o Referral of these children to appropriate services;
o Verification that they have been removed; and
o Tracking them afterwards to ensure that their situation has improved.
• Child labour monitoring complements and does not substitute national labour inspection systems
• Child labour monitoring can be used as an information base for policy development and
education sector plans
• Present the information in this unit.

• Ensure that participants know:
o The key elements of child labour monitoring, including:
Identification
Verification
Referral
Tracking
o Who is involved in child labour monitoring and how
• Begin to bring participants attention to the possible connections between education and child
labour monitoring. Discussion should focus on the following questions:
o How relevant is child labour monitoring to education systems?
o How far is it possible for labour inspectors and education inspectors to work together?
o What other partnerships could usefully be developed to promote better information
collection / sharing systems?
o To what extent are these partnerships already developed?

Child labour: Measuring and monitoring
National data collection
Child labour data collection is fundamental to the design of policies and programmes. Better
information on child labour means more effective action. Research innovations contributed by the
ILO over the past two decades include advances in measuring household and women’s work,
informal sector studies and the use of ethnographic techniques and time-use studies, all of which
have been relevant to improving the quality of information on child labour. Throughout the 1990s the
ILO worked to improve methods for gathering quantitative data on child labour.
Through the Statistical Information and Monitoring Programme on Child Labour (SIMPOC), the ILO
has been able to assist countries with their child labour surveys that in turn have enabled the ILO to
produce global estimates of child labour. New global estimates, providing a more complete picture
of child labour across the world appeared in 2002 and 2006. These estimates were extrapolations
from national data sets, including SIMPOC surveys and other household and community surveys such
as surveys conducted under the World Bank’s Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) and
UNICEF’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS), national labour force surveys and data provided
by the United Nations Population Division. UCW has also been a major resource in supporting and
working to harmonize these various research tools. Finally, the results of these child labour surveys
were matched to UNESCO data on primary school enrolments. These showed a clear link between
child labour developments and trends in children’s education, but the extent varies between
individual countries and regions.
Labour inspectorates
Labour inspectors are important sources of information on:
• General conditions of work

• Occupational safety and health
• (Illegal) employment
Through their inspection of workplaces, labour inspectors monitor compliance with minimum age
laws regarding the employment of children and hazardous working conditions. In so doing, labour
inspectors engage in data collection, maintain records and write reports. Furthermore, a labour
inspectorate must operate within a clear policy framework that addresses the use of
complementary inputs such as birth registration and school attendance records, information
services, credible monitoring systems and collaboration with other organizations and authorities.
Besides ordinary or regular inspections, there may be special inspection visits, follow-up visits or team
visits regarding specific issues such as data collection on child labour. Such exercises may involve
outside exerts or monitors from NGOs, etc.
Labour inspectors should contribute to the systematic gathering of information on the nature and
extent of child labour, for instance on a sectoral basis, data which can then be used in policy
development, programme development and research.
Child labour monitoring
Child labour monitoring (CLM) is the process that ensures coordinated and appropriate observation.
Its objective is to ensure that children, and young legally employed workers, are safe from
exploitation and hazards at work. CLM is a relatively new area of work that has evolved from project
level interventions that involve the identification of child labour, the removal of children from these
situations and tracking what happens to them afterwards. This micro-level data from CLM ought to
94
be linked up to the national survey exercises outlined above so that a complete picture of the child
labour problem and of the out-of-school population is provided.
CLM complements national labour inspection systems – it is not a substitute for a properly resourced
labour inspectorate. It directly supports the implementation of the ILO Minimum Age Convention,
1973 (No. 138) and the ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182) that calls for the
establishment of appropriate mechanisms for monitoring the provisions of the Convention.
The CLM concept has evolved over time from sector-specific and workplace-centred interventions
to a more holistic and comprehensive approach to child labour and education. In the case of the
Bangladesh garment industry, CLM acted as the bridge between removing children from the
factories and ensuring they were registered in schools.
CLM is a step-by-step process whose principal activities include regularly repeated direct
observations to identify child labourers and to determine risks to which they are exposed, referral of
these children to appropriate services, in particular enrolment in appropriate education facilities,
verification that they have been removed, and tracking them afterwards to ensure that their
situation has improved.
The actual monitoring, i.e. the identification and referral of child labourers to services, such as
schools, is generally conducted through multi-sector teams. These may include labour inspectors,
local government officials, employer and worker representatives, social workers, teachers,
community and village committee members, and so on.
CLM is a way to mainstream action against child labour at the level of the local government where
child labour occurs and where services, such as schooling, are made available for girls and boys.
Information generated by CLM helps policy-makers know where the problem lies so they can take
action. CLM can be used as an information base for national action plans against child labour
through which different services (education, health, etc.) can be provided.

Conceptual Map –
Child Labour National Authorities
Monitoring Education/Skills development Legislation and Policies Industrial Relations
Safety at work Public enforcement and protection Youth employment
Vocational Education International commitments and cooperation
Reporting
SME development
Social Security
National Action Against Child Labour Verification

Ministries of Labour, Agriculture, Education,
The flow of policy and action

Social Development
The flow of information
Trade Unions, Employers, NGOs
Regional Authorities
Regional Policies and Planning
Local Authorities
Law Enforcement
Rehabilitation
Referral
Reporting
Feedback
WORKPLACE MONITORING SCHOOL / SERVICES MONITORING COMMUNITY MONITORING

Labour Inspectors School Inspectors Community Councils
Employers and workers Parents’ Groups Women’s groups
Social workers NGOs etc Youth groups
NGOs etc
Action
Regular observation of Healthier workplace and Access to education or Referral to school Increased awareness and
factories, small- and respect of core labour suitable alternatives Rehabilitation action to address child
medium-sized enterprises, standards Psycho-social services labour
mines, farms, fisheries, Repatriation
streets and homes
Results
Identification of the worst Children Aged 15 to 17 Basic quality education for Children have better Communities committed
forms of child labour have better working all children alternatives for the future and engaged in the fight
conditions. Younger against child labour
children removed
96
UNIT 2: SCHOOL-BASED MONITORING
Facilitator notes
Objectives
o Understand the role that schools and communities can play in helping monitor child labour
o Understand the importance of adopting and enforcing compulsory education
o Appreciate the role school-based monitoring can play in retention of at-risk children
Key messages
• Compulsory education and child labour laws are mutually reinforcing

• The enforcement of compulsory education laws requires the setting up of a special apparatus to
monitor school attendance and liaise with parents and the judiciary. School inspection systems
need strengthening
• Teachers and educators are best placed to know of absenteeism and those at risk of dropping
out
• Teachers are an important source of information on children who should be in school but who
are working
• It is important that teachers are properly supported and trained for attendance monitoring and
its potential link to child labour analysis
• Present the material in the introduction to this unit

• Ensure that participants understand the rationale behind compulsory education as a
government responsibility, the enforcement apparatus needed, and the characteristics and
methods of school-based monitoring. Initially, discussion may focus on clarifying these points and
briefly on participants’ experience of monitoring in education and the role of teachers and
communities
Compulsory education laws and their enforcement
Compulsory education laws harmonized to minimum age laws is a key policy step in child labour
elimination. Compulsory education and child labour laws are complimentary and mutually
reinforcing. Birth registration is critical to the enforcement of both. Education is made free so that it
can be made compulsory. Education is a responsibility of governments to implement over the whole
country to avoid disparities by region or group. Education is usually made compulsory when
enrolment rates are already quite high where the task is to reach and retain the last 10-20 per cent.
This hard-to-reach group is precisely the population likely to be working.

ENFORCEMENT APPARATUS
To enforce compulsory education governments:

• Appoint trained attendance officers or truant officers to go to the homes of
parents or guardians whose children fail to go to school. Attendance officers
may be teachers, appointees of the local school board or local government,
or members of the local police department
• They prepare enumeration registers, conduct household surveys, check
attendance registers at school, and visit the homes of children who have failed
to attend school for several days or weeks
• They have the facility to go to local judicial officers to issue notices against
parents or guardians whose children do not attend school. Ultimately,
sanctions are applied
The national picture
At a national level, education systems in many developing countries do not have a well-established
and inter-locking system of enforcement. School inspection systems, like labour inspectorates, are
poorly resourced in most cases. This means poor coverage with infrequency of visits, especially in
remote rural schools; lack of follow-up even of those schools visited; low morale with the
inspectorate related to poor pay and conditions, and a sense that there will be little if no action
based on complaints; most of the time inspectors may well find that enrolment and attendance
data is poorly kept and may be fraudulent; and over-stretched, but under qualified and trained, the
schools inspectorate, has little standing in the local communities they deal with.
The local level: Developing school-based monitoring
At the local level, teachers routinely monitor and record various aspects of students’ lives including
school attendance, academic performance and behaviour. In addition to formal monitoring,
teachers are often amongst the most knowledgeable about their students and their lives. Through a
range of interactions in the classroom and beyond they may be aware, to some degree, of family
background and circumstances as well as out of school activities.
While school attendance may be monitored routinely, there is considerable variability in the action
taken when a pattern of non-attendance begins to emerge or if attendance stops completely. It is
important for educators to consider what additional information they need and what actions are
required to help them meet attendance and retention targets.
At the local level, it is important to collect data from schools and have direct access to information
from individual schools through teachers’ participation. The most relevant information is school
attendance that must be up to date and accurate. Information about enrolment, dropout and
completion rates can also be collected at various intervals. It is the sharing of information about
work and schooling that allows community members or local authorities to take action. School
authorities must ensure the participation of the referred child in education.
There are two different approaches to monitoring in schools:
1. The school is monitored externally usually through school inspectors and teachers cooperate
and provide information for the exercise; and
2. Schools are active participants, indeed the driving force, in the monitoring process. Teachers
are usually among the most knowledgeable about the whereabouts of children and their
family conditions and they can play a valuable part in the monitoring and follow-up process
and act as community monitors themselves. This is often referred to as school based
98
monitoring where the school is used as a starting place for collecting information and is
complimented by work place information.
Comparing school attendance and enrolment information with household data provides valuable
insights to the possible extent of child labour problem and helps in targeting appropriate responses.
ILO has been successfully working with UNICEF on enhancing education and workplace monitoring
linkages for instance in Bangladesh and Pakistan.
Where CLM includes the participation of school authorities in an active referral system, additional
information will be collected by external child labour monitors or by teachers as part of the
monitoring team. In an integrated CLM approach, workplace, community and education
information is collected in a common database where it can be crosschecked and analyzed.
Successful referral requires direct and ongoing coordination with service providers with regard to
individual children through their cycle of schooling, rehabilitation or skills development services. The
objective is to make sure that referral leads to a better situation for the child.
There are several important challenges that need to be met. These include:
• Proper resource support and training, especially for teachers
• Establishing cooperation between different parties
• Defining clear roles and responsibilities
• Sharing of information (roles, timing, quality of information)
• Technical and statistical comparability of information
This activity aims to explore the connections between existing monitoring systems for education and
child labour in the participants’ context. It identifies those responsible for monitoring attendance at
school and whether the data is used to identify working children. Any connections between
education officials and other agencies concerned with child labour can be identified and
possibilities for improvement of cooperation and enforcement are considered.
1. For this activity, participants will work in groups of three or four. If there is representation of a
range of different responsibilities within the education system it would be helpful to make
each group as diverse as possible
2. Distribute a copy of the worksheet “Monitoring school attendance and child labour” to each
participant
3. Ask participants to review the worksheet individually for a few minutes
4. Explain that the worksheet aims to aid the participants in mapping the existing educational
monitoring system and possible linkages with child labour monitoring
5. Participants may begin to discuss each question and to complete the matrix
Conclusion
When complete, one group will share their answers to the first section. Time should be allowed for
sharing of other answers and follow-up discussion of the answers provided. Another group will report
on the second section. The same procedure should be followed for each section. At each stage of
feedback the facilitator should ensure that participants understand the feedback and that each
context has been considered.

MODULE 6
UNIT 2 ACTIVITY 1: MONITORING SCHOOL ATTENDANCE AND CHILD LABOUR
Who is responsible for monitoring school

enrolment and attendance in your
country?
What happens if a child is regularly absent

or absent for a prolonged period?
Is there any follow up to establish reasons

for absence?
If yes, would children’s work be recorded

as a reason for absence?
Is there any cooperation between

education officials and other Ministries or
agencies concerning child labour
incidence and school attendance ?
Can cooperation and enforcement be

improved?
If so, how?
100
UNIT 3: HARMONIZING EDUCATION AND CHILD LABOUR MONITORING
Facilitator notes
Objectives
It is anticipated that by the end of the unit, participants will:
• Be aware of approaches to monitoring progress towards EFA goals at all levels

• Be aware of how education monitoring systems need to be more sensitive to child labour as
many if not most of the out- of-school population are likely to be child workers
• Appreciate that there are important data gaps which if filled would be of mutual benefit to
EFA and child labour elimination
Key messages
• Education monitoring systems have been established at all levels to measure

progress
• Education monitoring systems provide ample opportunity to include child labour
indicators
• It is vital that child labour data filters from the local level up to the global level of EFA
monitoring
• This greater official recognition must then lead to appropriate policy resource
allocations to Ministries of Education to tackle the child labour problem as part of
their response to reaching the unreached
Present the material in the introduction to this unit. Ensure that participants:
• Understand the rationale, characteristics and methods of monitoring progress in education

at all levels
• Discuss how education monitoring processes and child labour monitoring can be better
harmonized and what role Ministries of Education can play in this process and the
importance of officially recognizing child labour as the major element in out-of-school
populations
Monitoring progress in education
The international level
The annual EFA Monitoring Report shows global progress towards the Dakar goals. The GMR relies
heavily on data provided annually to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS) by national
governments. Governments establish their own mechanisms for obtaining, processing and utilizing
data. Most provide data based on a standard questionnaire created and distributed by UIS
covering:
• Structure of the education system

• Number of pupils, teachers and institutions by level of education
• Enrolment by age and grade
The national level
At the national level education systems are monitored to help with policy development and
resource allocation decisions. Most Ministries of Education have Education Management Information
Systems (EMIS) at national and provincial levels. Information is provided by schools and teachers,
and sometimes by school inspectors. Data typically collected include:
• Enrolment
• Attendance
• Retention
• Academic achievement
• Literacy and numeracy
At this level it would be useful to include information on child labour generated by national surveys
and CLM – the out-of-school group of children - to know who should be in school rather than who is
in school. If child labour is viewed as the major element in out-of-school populations it should be
therefore used as an indicator of progress in education in reaching the unreached. As noted above,
child labour challenges education systems on many levels and how well they are responding to this
challenge is an important indicator as to the overall health of the system.
Ministries of Education have a very important role in responding to the challenges of child labour
through developing a monitoring system that is sensitive to the needs of hard-to-reach children. This
will require better integration of child labour and education data. Child labour sensitive data
collected in this way should then filter up to the global level and be mainstreamed into the GMR –
the 2007 Report did include an analysis of 45 countries education plans giving their own assessment
of who are the marginalized and therefore priority target groups for action. This varies with region.
Only in South and West Asia do working children get singled out among other categories, including
migrants and rural populations. There is an important need therefore to promote the greater
recognition of working children as a key element in out-of-school populations. This greater
recognition and endorsement, at the global level, of the status of working children within the un
reached, must in turn help shape Ministries of Education planning and resource allocations. This
demonstrates the extent to which the worldwide movements against child labour and in support of
EFA - from local to global levels – are inter-related and mutually supportive and the centrality of
making the right policy choices if each are to be effectively tackled.
102
REFERENCES
ILO (2002), Inter-parliamentary Union: Eliminating the Worst Forms of Child Labour: A practical guide
to ILO Convention No. 182. IPEC (Geneva).
ILO (2002a): Implementing the ILO Code of Practice on HIV/AIDS and the World of Work: An
education and training manual. (Geneva).
ILO (2003): Facts on safe work. Fact sheet. (Geneva).
ILO (2003a): Indigenous and tribal children: Assessing child labour and education challenges: Child
labour and education working paper. (Geneva).
ILO (2005), UNESCO, UNICEF, World Bank, Global March: Emerging good practices in the elimination
of child labour and the achievement of education for all. Global Task Force on Child Labour &
Education for All (GTF) (Geneva).
ILO (2005a): Prevention: a global strategy; Promoting safety and health at work: the ILO report for
World Day for Safety and Health at Work 2005. (Geneva).
IPEC (2002): Combating Child Labour and HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. (Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2002a): Every child counts: new global estimates on child labour. (Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2003): Child Labour: An information kit for teachers, educators and their organizations.
(Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2003a): Costs and benefits of education to replace child labour: research paper in
conjunction with the ILO-IPEC study on the costs and benefits of the elimination of child labour.
(Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2003b): Promotion of gender equality in action against child labour and trafficking: a practical
guide for organizations. (Bangkok, ILO).
IPEC (2003c): Time-Bound Programme: Manual for Action Planning. (Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2004), Ray, R. and Lancaster, L.: The impact of children’s work on schooling: multi-country
evidence based on SIMPOC data. (Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2004a): Combating child labour through education. (Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2005): Child Labour and Education – A training manual for education Practitioners. Draft.
(Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2005a): Child labour monitoring resource kit. (Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2005b): Policy paper on educational perspectives related to the impact of the HIV-AIDS
pandemic on child labour in Malawi. (Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2006), Hagemann, F. et all: Global child labour trends 2000 to 2004. (Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2006a): Education as an intervention strategy to eliminate and prevent child labour – IPEC’s
Consolidated Good Practices. (Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2006b): Handbook on combating child labour among indigenous and tribal peoples : a joint
PRO 169 and IPEC initiative. (Geneva, ILO).
IPEC (2006c): Tackling hazardous child labour in agriculture: guidance on policy and practice.
(Geneva, ILO).
Levy, C. (1996): Working Paper 74. (London, DPU).
Pigozzi, M. (2004): How should we define quality education – A UNESCO perspective. Draft Working
Paper. (Paris, UNESCO).
Right to Education (2004), Melchiorre, A.: At what age?... : are school-children employed, married
and taken to court? (Copenhagen).

UCW (2004), Woodhead, M.: Psychosocial impacts of child work: a framework for research,
monitoring and intervention, UCW Working Papers. (Rome).
UNESCO (2005): Guidelines for Inclusion: Ensuring Access to Education for All. (Paris).
UNESCO (2006): Getting Girls Out of Work and Into School. (Bangkok).
UNESCO (2007): EFA Global Monitoring Report. (Paris).
Woodhead, M. (1998): Children’s Perspectives on their Working Lives. (Stockholm, Radda Barnen).
World Bank (2006), Nielsen, H.D.: From schooling access to learning outcomes: an unfinished
agenda: an evaluation of World Bank support to primary education. (Washington, D.C.)
World Bank (2006a): From schooling access to learning outcomes: an unfinished agenda - an
evaluation of World Bank support to primary education. Evaluation Group (Conference
Edition). (Washington D.C.).
104
ANNEXE: ADDITIONAL RESOURCES BY MODULE
Module 1
Child Labour and Education – An IPEC Perspective 02
Costs and Benefits of Education to Replace Child Labour, Matz, P. (IPEC, 2002) Conclusion 35
Every Child Counts: New Global Estimates on Child Labour (IPEC, 2002a) – Executive Summary. 56
Global child labour trends 2000 to 2004 (IPEC, 2006) – Executive Summary 59
ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work 73
ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) 77
ILO Minimum Age Convention,1973 (No. 138) 89
ILO Recommendation 146 concerning Minimum Age for Admission to Employment 96
ILO Worst forms of Child Labour Convention, 1999 (No. 182) 100
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 112
Module 2
Compulsory Education and Child Labour: Historical Lessons, Contemporary Challenges and 22
Future Directions, Fyfe, A. (ILO, Draft, 2005)
EFA Global Monitoring Report 2005 Extract 38
How Should We Define Quality Education – A UNESCO Perspective, Pigozzi, M. (Draft, 2004) 65
ILO Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) 77
The Dakar Framework for Action (UNESCO, 2000) 130
The New Delhi Declaration 2003 109
UN Convention on the Rights of the Child 112
Module 3
Child Labour, Education and Children’s Rights (Betcherman, G. et. al. 2004) 13
Education As an Intervention Strategy to Eliminate and Prevent Child Labour: Consolidated 36
good practices of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC,
2006a)
Module 4
Guidelines for Inclusion: Ensuring Access to education for All (Paris, UNESCO, 2005) 62
Indigenous and Tribal Children: assessing child labour and education challenges (Geneva, ILO
107
2003a)
Module 5
Education as an Intervention Strategy to Eliminate and Prevent Child Labour (IPEC, 2006a) 36
Emerging Good Practices in the Elimination of Child Labour and the Achievement of Education 41
For All (ILO, 2005)
Time-Bound Programme: Manual for Action Planning, Book 4 (IPEC, 2003c) 110
Module 6
Child Labour Monitoring Guidelines, (ILO, Draft, 2005) 06
Compulsory Education and Child Labour: Historical Lessons, Contemporary Challenges and
22
Future Directions, Fyfe, A. (ILO, Draft, 2005)

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Child Labour and Education Policy A Training Manual

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Child labour and education policy

International Labour Organization (ILO)

ISBN: 9789221212317; 9789221212324 (Web PDF)

ILO Cataloguing in Publication Data

Visit our website: www.ilo.org/ipec

Printed in ITC Turin

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour v

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour vii

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour ix

• The nature, causes and extent of child labour.

Overview of the training

Module 1 Introducing child labour

Module 1 is an introduction to child labour - its causes, extent and consequences:

Module 2 International and national responses to child labour

Module 3 Policy options

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour 1

Module 5 Good practices

Module 6 Child labour monitoring

Unit 1 Child labour monitoring

The role of the facilitator

The role of the facilitator is to:

• During the training the facilitator will:

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour 3

INTRODUCING CHILD LABOUR

Unit 1: Nature, extent and causes

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour 1

• It is anticipated that by the end of the unit, participants will:

Introduction for facilitator

Before starting the activities it is important to:

1. Present the information contained in the unit.

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour 9

Key definitions and policy instruments

Effective, time-bound preventative action is demanded of ratifying states, including the

ILO Recommendation 190 offers guidelines for implementing the Convention.

The ILO Minimum Age Convention, 1973 (No. 138)

GENERAL FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Light work 13 years 12 years

Dangerous work 18 years 18 years

Extent and distribution of child Labour

Asia Pacific has the highest number of working or

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour 11

317 million children were working:

Causes of child labour

“The causes of child labour are primarily rooted in poverty created by

(Adapted from ILO, 2002).

Notes for the facilitator

2. Participants will be placed into groups of four or five;

Ask participants to report on their discussion focussing on:

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour 13

• It is anticipated that by the end of the unit, participants will:

Introduction for facilitator

1. Present the information contained in this unit.

The consequences for society

development prospects because of

capital formation. 4000

In many contexts, poverty creates a 3000

vicious cycle whereby it encourages 2000

child labour, high fertility rates, poor

so on. Conversely, these factors lead 0

to increased poverty. The result is that Transitional

correlates will become increasingly

International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour 15

The most significant economic benefits derive from: