International Labour Organization EDUCATION AS AN INTERVENTION STRATEGY TO ELIMINATE AND PREVENT CHILD LABOUR Consolidated Good Practices of the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) Table of Contents Foreword..........................................................................................................................................3 Child labour: An obstacle to achieving Education For All..............................................................5 Good practices in eliminating child labour through education ........................................................6 Upstream policy development/reinforcement and education resources Linking the elimination of child labour to the Education For All initiative ....................................10 Working with Ministries of Education.............................................................................................16 Engaging governments to cover the cost of education.....................................................................21 Education Task Forces on child labour............................................................................................27 Curricula development and extracurricular support Mainstreaming child labour issues into school curricula.................................................................34 Academic or extra-curricular support outside the classroom...........................................................41 Teacher training and mobilizing teachers’ organizations Teacher training - Building capacity of national institutions to combat child labour......................52 Sensitizing teachers to the problem of child labour and the importance of education through the ILO-IPEC Teachers’ Kit and teacher training..............................................61 Mobilization of teachers’ organizations to combat child labour......................................................69 Non-formal and transitional education approaches Transitional non-formal education as a bridge for working children to reintegrate into formal schools...........................................................................................................................80 Comprehensive support to ensure the mainstreaming of children into formal primary school......................................................................................................................89 Establishing and maintaining multi-purpose centres .......................................................................95 Comprehensive rehabilitation and education for street girls............................................................100 Volutary participation by young activists in non-formal education programmes............................107 School-based and community monitoring Strengthening school retention through school-based child labour monitoring mechanisms...................................................................................................................113 Comprehensive monitoring of child labour and education through community-based and community-owned mechanisms ..................................................................119 Mobilizing communities to take ownership of child labour problems and solutions ......................123 Skills training and employment-related approaches Employment as an integral part of vocational training ....................................................................132 Apprenticeship schemes with local small businesses ......................................................................138 Support services to skills training ....................................................................................................145 Income-generating activities School-based income generating activities in support of education ................................................152 Economic alternatives to families: Income-generating activities ....................................................158 Foreword As an integral part of its work in the elimination of child labour over the last decade, ILO-IPEC has used education and skills training interventions extensively in its programmes and projects worldwide. As these projects have progressed, matured and successfully concluded in many cases, ILO-IPEC has amassed a considerable portfolio of knowledge, experience and expertise. In the context of its global education project (2003-2006) funded by the government of the Netherlands, “Including the excluded: Combating child labour through education”, ILO-IPEC recognized the significant value in collecting this information, analyzing, validating and disseminating it more widely through a compendium of “good practice” interventions. The principle objective is that implementing agencies, partner organizations, governments and other national and international organizations and agencies can learn from these experiences and project outcomes and adapt and replicate them in the context of their own project design and implementation. The fruit of a significant amount of work in collecting and validating information is contained in this publication. However, we see this as a first step in an ongoing and necessary process to constantly improve upon and adapt our experiences so that the outcomes are serving exploited children, their families and communities more effectively. Action to prevent and eliminate child labour has reached a certain level of maturity. The challenge now is to galvanize countries across the globe, the international agencies that assist them and the countless partners at grassroots level to become more concerned about the issue of child labour and adopt the approaches which have proven to be successful in eliminating it. ILO-IPEC has therefore reinvigorated its activities to speed up the process of collection, analysis, training and outreach so that its cache of knowledge becomes widely available, and available in the form that is easiest for the target groups to use . The good practices themselves can represent a programme activity at any level, from broad policy- level activities to practices at the grassroots level in the field. It need not represent an overall project or programme as even if a project overall has not been successful, there could still be good practices that it developed or applied. A key aspect is that a good practice is something that actually has been tried and shown to work, i.e. as distinct from what may be a potentially good idea but has not actually been tested. It could also represent work in progress based on preliminary or intermediate findings. In the case of ILO-IPEC’s work in this field, the following were established as the main criteria of the selection of good practices: • that it is innovative or creative; • that it has documented effectiveness and/or impact; • that it is replicable; • that it is sustainable; • that it is relevant to direct or indirect action against child labour; • that it is responsive and ethical; • that resources (human, financial or material) are used efficiently in its implementation. ILO-IPEC is active in many different countries, working with a multitude of different partners. Other organizations are also active in the field of child labour around the world. Good practices provide a means of being able to learn from the experiences of others and to apply them in practice. Otherwise, one may devote considerable effort in “reinventing the wheel” or in repeating mistakes that others already have made. Good practices can be used most appropriately to stimulate thinking and to suggest ideas for consideration. It is not expected that good practices necessarily should be copied from one setting to another. The context can vary across settings, and thus even highly successful interventions may not “travel” well. At the least, however, these can provide “food for thought” and ideas about possible 3 adaptations. The more that a similar approach has been tried and shown to work in multiple and varied settings, the more likely that it might also apply in some respect elsewhere as well. There are a variety of approaches being undertaken using education as a means of combating and preventing child labour. The identification of good practices in this area will aid in the creation of a knowledge-based tool that can help and assist practitioners and policy-makers, and may be able to support work in mainstreaming child labour in education and poverty reduction strategies and in other approaches. I take this opportunity to thank the Government of the Netherlands for providing the funding for this work. I would also like to thank Ms Urmila Sarkar who conceived the idea of this product, ILO-IPEC colleagues in the field for implementing the projects from which these good practices have been derived, Ms Denise Cheung for her tireless efforts in assembling them and, finally, Mr Nick Grisewood for compiling and editing them in a format ready for publishing. We in ILO-IPEC view this publication as a step forward in this global sharing of knowledge and experiences and we hope that this will continue to be an ongoing and fruitful process and dialogue that will ultimately benefit those who need our support and commitment most. Guy Thijs Director International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) ILO Geneva 4 Child Labour: An Obstacle to Achieving Education For All Education is pivotal to eliminating and preventing child labour, to establishing a skilled workforce and to promoting development based on the principles