CHILD WORKERS AND SCHOOLING
2.3 THE IMPACT OF CHILD WORK ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE
Children work for such people without any payment. An illustration of this is the case of a girl who was given a home by a female teacher (Rogers & Standing, 1981). The teacher gave the girl boarding, lodging, clothing, and most importantly, access to centres of formal education, in exchange for housework, which the teacher herself could not do because she was physically handicapped.
Many children give related adults their earnings after working in the informal sector (Ennew, 1985; ILO, 1982). To add to this, in some instances, children have to account for their earnings to unscrupulous businessmen who exploit them (Rogers & Standing, 1981).
2.3 THE IMPACT OF CHILD WORK ON ACADEMIC
adolescents from different types of communities, Steinberg et al (1983:178) concluded that,
More than 20 hours weekly diminish youngster's investment in school, increase delinquency and drug use, further autonomy from parental control, and diminish feeling of self-reliance. Across the outcomes studied, inspection of group means indicated that non-workers generally were better adjusted than adolescents.
While a study (Addison, Bhalotra, Coulter& Heady, 1997) posited thatinGhana school attendance is negatively affected when a child works for more than 10 hours per week, a study (Steinberg, Fedley & Dornbush, 1993) in the United States found that academic performance of children between the ages of 12 and 17 is negatively affected by 15 hours of work per week. Somewhat contrasting results for the United States come from D'Amico (1984) who found that while employment for more than 20 hours per week increased dropout rates, whilst employment for less than20hours per week correlated with higher grades.
For children engaged in agricultural work before and after school and each Saturday, attending school regularly is a challenge. They also struggle to make progress in school. They hardly do their homework properly. Working children attend school with a number of disadvantages that inevitably lead to discrimination. Some of these disadvantages are lack of materials, deprived environment, poor clothing, and low-status jobs that affect their appearance, particularly scavenging or begging. Uneven school attendance compromises their school performance even further and almost inevitably there are many dropouts (Blanc, 1994). In an effort to earn a living, a working child may sometimes develop bad habits such as stealing, gambling, smoking, and drinking. Some parents reported that working children turn out to be defiant, disobedient, self- centered, and extravagant spenders in a study conducted on working children in Bombay, (Sing, 1990).
Domestic work may be a barrier to girls' school attainment. A study by Levison and Moe (1997) provides evidence for this. Employed children are less attentive at school than their unemployed counterparts (Mathambo, 2000). Street hawking tends to be associated with poor academic achievement. According to a study in Lagos (Oloko, 1988), children who hawked after school hours performed significantly poorer than did those who assist their parents with internal domestic chores. A study in the United States (UNICEF, 2000), also showed that the academic performance of children between the ages of 15 and 17 is adversely affected if they work 15 hours a week. Moreover, if children enter employment prematurely their educational attainment is compromised or stopped. Working girls, however, placed a higher priority than boys do on education (UNICEF, 2000).
There are conflicting findings from other studies, indicating that though street trading diminishes school performance, this is sometime exaggerated. A study (Myers, 1991) found that working stimulates the development of positive qualities of personalities and leaders. In both primary and secondary school, children who hawk indicated that they were class captains, school prefects, or other types of school leaders. That working children come from only the poorest families is an assumption that is challenged. Working children also take an interest in learning new skills at an early age. In this way a child who is curious by nature gradually becomes more skillful in a particular habit, provided his other needs are also met.
Work provides a good opportunity for children to be more skillful and efficient in their early childhood. Most children are engaged in work, which combines both positive and negative factors for their growth and development, and complicated situations of this type are far more difficult to assess. If working is as energy- sapping as maintained above, the question inevitably arises as to how some children manage to achieve academic excellence. According to a developmental model, working, particularly in the "right" kind of jobs, may have positive effects on the academic achievement. The belief is that increased involvement in the world of work leads to the transmission of academically related skills and
knowledge and that work also teaches and reinforces desirable adult-like traits such as responsibility and maturity that enhance academic outcomes (Holland &
Andrew, 1987).
There are other factors to be considered on the issue of academic performance.
Parental involvement in the school contributes to better school performance of working children (Rogers & Standing, 1981). Working children who have mothers and grandmothers who encourage them by attending PTA meetings, monitor class and examination performance; tend to do well at school. Ennew (1985) established that children working in largely home-based occupations like domestic work had higher levels of attendance than those working outside the home at fixed locations such as market stalls.
Work plays an important role in the development of the child if it involves purpose, plan, and freedom. Ithas been observed in a survey (Parsons, 1974) that in some unorganised sectors, child workers are given light work as compared to adults. This system enables them to learn and pick-up occupational skills earlier than others and this strengthens the child's character and makes him or her a good sober citizen. The study assessed by Parsons (1974) is among the first to empirically consider the role of in-school employment. The study views learner employment strictly as a means of off-setting the direct costs of school instead of the usual skill-enhancing activity conception. Due to the need for money to pay for additional schooling or to finance current consumption, the child may view employment as a chance to invest in income enhancing skills not provided in the classroom. Many young men acquire a substantial amount of schoolwork expenence and their commutative experience is positively correlated with schooling attainment.