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Pay for Education Reported |
Kissimmee, Florida, April 2002: A U.S. Department of Labor report on child labor says that governments of most of the 73 developing countries surveyed were spending more money on education than on the military but still lacked enough money to educate all children.
The report found, however, that multilateral development banks spend relatively little money in these countries on providing basic education and preventing the worst forms of child labor.
The annual report on child labor, mandated by the U.S. Congress, was released February 4. Entitled "Advancing the Campaign Against Child Labor: The Resource Allocations of National Governments and International Financial Institutions," the report is available on the Internet at: http://www.dol.gov/ilab/media/reports/iclp/Advancing3/overview.htm.
Poverty and the HIV/AIDS pandemic are two of the bigger reasons children in developing countries stay out or drop out of school, the report says. Another reason is gender discrimination, with girls kept at home to do household work, it says. The report emphasizes how crucial education is to development.
The report says governments must pay attention to the special needs of children already at work instead of at school and children at risk of having to go to work.
"The areas that are often overlooked include expanding educational access and quality; ensuring gender equity; reducing rural and urban disparities in education; expanding literacy and non-formal education programs for those dropping out or never enrolled in the formal system; and forging links between non-formal, formal and vocational education," it says.
Achieving a United Nations goal of providing free, good-quality primary education to all the world's children by 2015 requires financial assistance from bilateral agencies, donor countries, and international financial institutions as well as coordination of educational programs at the local, national and international levels, the report says.
Following is an excerpt from the report: From the data presented in Part One on the expenditures by national governments on basic education and military for the period from 1990 to 2001, there are no definitive or universal conclusions to be drawn from the spending allocations by the countries referenced in this report. The trends and specific amounts committed by the IFIs [international financial institutions] detailed in Part Two suggest that amounts devoted to child labor and education since 1989 do not represent a substantial investment compared to other programs funded by the World Bank and other regional banks, but that there have been and continue to be resources allocated for child labor and education in the referenced countries. While the financial commitments by the national governments and resource allocations by the multilateral development banks to child labor and education programs for the referenced countries in this report provide an indication of the level of spending to directly or indirectly address the elimination of child labor, they do not inform the effectiveness of these programs or consider the impacts of these monetary investments.
In an effort to advance the campaign against child labor, this report concludes by (1) highlighting the importance of investing in education; (2) describing briefly the challenges to meeting the education needs of working children; and (3) emphasizing the need for international cooperation to strengthen the links between increasing educational access and eliminating the worst forms of child labor.
A. Education: An Investment in Human Capital and National Development
Many studies have demonstrated how investment in education contributes to economic growth and national development. Education is a major factor in development. It enhances the skills and productivity of citizens and creates new opportunities for innovation and technological advancement. Regardless of any nation's current stage of development, education plays a crucial role in increasing the general opportunities that people have available to them, and in providing avenues away from impoverished futures.
Investing in children's education yields great benefits for both the individual child and society as a whole. At the individual level, children who are educated have better opportunities for higher incomes in adult life, decreased poverty, reduced criminal activity, greater political participation, better health, and increased life expectancy. Moreover, at the national level, when children are educated their human capital renders development benefits such as lower fertility rates, a greater pool of skilled workers, increased economic growth, and lower dependence on social support programs later in life. The benefits that a country derives from a more educated population also include increased wealth and stability. Education can thus be seen as a social and governmental concern and responsibility.
In spite of stated commitments to education, governments of developing nations often lack resources to fully fund their public education systems. As a result, these systems cannot adequately or effectively serve their communities. The "Global Campaign for Education" indicates the state of public school systems in the majority of developing countries are deteriorating, and that they are in need of "fundamental improvements in ... quality, accountability and efficiency ...."
The lack of governmental expenditures on education will likely serve to exacerbate social problems within a country, creating further obstacles to its economic development as a whole. Without a major investment in public schooling, children are more likely to drop out of school and enter the labor force. Many children work because schools are not accessible, quality of education is low, the curriculum is not relevant to their needs, or parents simply cannot afford the extra school fees required of them to subsidize the costs of public schooling. Early entry into the workforce may reduce future earnings and perpetuate a cycle of poverty in future generations. Therefore, strengthening the education system is not only an essential strategy for eliminating child labor, but a central component to national development.
B. Challenges for Providing Education to Working Children
In 2000, the ILO [International Labor Organization] estimated that 211 million children aged 5 to 14 were working. Of these children, approximately 111 million children were working full time and did not attend school. The other 100 million children of the same age group combined work and school. In order to effectively remove these children from work and provide them with meaningful learning experiences, the barriers that prevent them from either entering or fully participating in school must be addressed.
Poverty is commonly the primary determinant of a child's participation in work and reason for dropping out of school. While education is free in many developing countries, families who are poor cannot afford the extra costs associated with schooling such as uniforms, school supplies, and transportation. The HIV/AIDS pandemic has also contributed to the growing number of children who have dropped out of school and entered the labor force. The prolonged illness or death of parents or guardians from the disease has left many children as either heads of households or orphans with no financial support other than their own labor. For children living in rural areas, the likelihood of working and dropping out of school is also great. An estimated 70 percent of the world's working children are engaged in agricultural production. Many families in rural areas in developing countries rely on farming as a source of livelihood, and children in rural areas are more likely to drop out of school during the harvesting seasons to work with their parents to supplement household income. This is in part compounded by the long distances required to travel to schools and lack of qualified teachers assigned to rural areas.
There are other reasons that keep working children out of school or discourage their integration into the formal school system. Sociocultural factors such as gender discrimination often hinder the effective participation of girls in school. Many girls in developing countries are required to stay at home and assist with household chores, and a majority of child domestic workers in other households are girls. Age can also be a barrier for former child laborers trying to be integrated into the formal school system. Frequently, children who are withdrawn from work and enrolled in school are several years older than their counterparts of normal primary school age. This age disparity may invoke feelings of insecurity and discourage older children from attending classes.
To not consider the special situation of working children or those children at risk of working may prevent their enrollment in schools, hinder their regular attendance, and preclude their retention in the school system. Thus, the issue of child labor must be considered in the development of education policies and programs. However, the special needs of working children or those children at risk of working are often not taken into account when formulating education plans. The areas that are often overlooked include expanding educational access and quality; ensuring gender equity; reducing rural and urban disparities in education; expanding literacy and non-formal education programs for those dropping out or never enrolled in the formal system; and forging links between non-formal, formal and vocational education. For example, ensuring gender equity in education may not be achieved without addressing the needs of the thousands of child domestic workers around the world who commonly are girls; and decreasing rural and urban disparities in education cannot be accomplished without addressing the needs of children working in agriculture. The education system must therefore adapt to address these types of problems if working children are to be educated. In addition, governments often do not provide the necessary extra support to education systems during shocks including climatic change, health-related pandemics such as HIV/AIDS, and other types of economic, political and social crises which may increase the risk of children dropping out of school and entering the workforce.
C. Concluding Remarks: "Education For All" Supports the Elimination of the Worst Forms of Child Labor
The previous report on Advancing the Campaign Against Child Labor, (Volume II): Addressing the Worst Forms of Child Labor, highlighted the development of an international consensus towards the elimination of the worst forms of child labor. Through the unanimous adoption and rapid ratification by member states of ILO Convention 182 on the Worst Forms of Child Labor, and through the creation of other international instruments such as the United Nation's Optional Protocols to the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography and the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflicts, the issue of child labor has gained increased attention throughout the international community.
As mentioned earlier, providing access to quality and relevant basic education is an integral part of the strategy to eliminate child labor, including its most exploitative forms. Quality and relevant education can serve the dual function of building the human capital of children withdrawn from exploitative work while preventing at-risk children from entering hazardous work situations. Moreover, initiatives that promote universal access to quality and relevant education for child workers and at-risk children coincide with the goals outlined in the Education For All (EFA) initiative adopted at a world forum in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990, and reaffirmed in the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal in April 2000:
... by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality ...
The United Nations Millennium Development Goals adopted by the General Assembly in September 2000 share the same vision by stating "that, by the year 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling and that girls and boys will have equal access to all levels of education." A crucial step towards achieving both the Millennium Development Goals and EFA goals by 2015 involves initiatives designed to simultaneously withdraw children from exploitative forms of labor and increase access to quality and relevant basic education.
As countries express their commitments to eliminating the worst forms of child labor by ratifying ILO Convention 182, they should also move towards making parallel efforts to increase financial resources to the provision of quality and relevant basic education in order to remove working children from hazardous labor and to prevent at-risk children from entering the workforce. In the short term, increased resource allocations to basic education may place economic strains on many developing countries. In this regard, an international consensus to eliminate child labor necessitates international cooperation by donor governments, bilateral technical agencies, multilateral development banks, and recipient countries to fund basic education and child labor elimination programs ....
Achieving the goals of EFA by 2015 will prove to be a challenge without the financial assistance of bilateral agencies, donor countries, and international financial institutions. Building alliances and institutional capacity at the local, national, and global level to coordinate policies and programs on education and child labor are important tenets in the elimination of the worst forms of child labor. Aside from providing financial resources, collaboration between international institutions such as the ILO, UNESCO [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization], and UNICEF [United Nations Children's Fund]; and cooperation among government ministries of labor, education, and social welfare, in developing countries are key to integrating important policy issues on education and child labor and mobilizing resources for sustainable programs.
As international efforts to provide basic education and address the worst forms of child labor gain greater momentum, the underlying goal of creating options for individuals to lead healthy and productive lives should not be lost. In this regard, achieving universal primary education is only the beginning of EFA. Children in the worst forms of child labor such as armed conflict, forced and bonded labor, and commercial sexual exploitation will need special rehabilitation and psychosocial services for reintegration into formal and non-formal school systems. Strengthening all levels and areas of education to provide all children, youth, and adults with the appropriate life skills necessary to succeed must also be seen as strategic elements necessary for the growth and development of countries across the world.