Child Labour and Education For All: An Issue Paper

Education is a key element in the prevention of child labour; at the same time, child labour is one of the main obstacles to Education for All (EFA). Understanding the interplay between education and child labour is therefore critical to achieving both EFA and child labour elimination goals. This paper forms part of UCW broader efforts towards improving this understanding of education-child labour links, providing a brief overview of relevant research and key knowledge gaps. The study largely confirm the conventional wisdom that child labour harms children's ability to enter and survive in the school system, and makes it more difficult for children to derive educational benefit from schooling once in the system. The evidence also suggested that these negative effects are not limited to economic activity but also extend to household chores, and that the intensity of work (in economic activity or household chores) is particularly important in determining the impact of work on schooling. As regards the link between education provision and child labour, it pointed to the important role of inadequate schooling in keeping children out of the classroom and into work. This evidence indicated that both the school quality and school access can play an important role in household decisions concerning whether children study or work.