Broadening the approach to Education for All: including working and other hard-to-reach children

As the Education for All process is progressing, two main groups of children are still left out: those who  have yet to gain access to a good primary school; and, those who do not get to attend even when an adequate, affordable school is accessible.  This report focuses on the second group of children, which it refers to as "the hard-to-reach children" or "the last ten per cent".  In particular it looks at children who work instead of attending school, or who combine work and school, and asks why they work.

The paper argues that for some children, the main obstacles to school participation are not school availability, cost or quality, but rather poverty, economic insecurity discrimination and cultural practices.  Many of these children work, not only out of necessity, but also because child labour is perceived as the best way to prepare them for the life they are expected to lead, in accordance with cultural norms and practices.  The paper argues that because lack of school access is not the main cause of exclusion for these children, traditional education policy tools alone will not be sufficient to include these hard-to-reach children. Other core ministries must step up and share EFA responsibilities with the ministry of education.  Comprehensive policy (for example, social protection, labour market and legal responses) will be needed to succeed. Commitment must be shown by finance ministries, and in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, national plans and budget debates.

Policy recommendations from the paper include:

•  fill knowledge gaps related to: the impact of service delivery within other sectors on bringing child labourers and other hard-to-reach children into school; non-economic activities particularly keeping girls out of school; identify what school quality features work best to attract working children; and, links between labour market activities, drop-out and irregular school attendance

• strengthen GMR indicators to reflect not only how many new children are in school but also those children who aren't
  

• reward inter-ministerial dialogue at the country level, dialogue between international agencies with different sector focus, and dialogue between sector divisions within international agencies

• establish a multi-donor, multi-agency trust fund to encourage the development and piloting of knowledge-based, cross-sectoral, politically realistic local strategies and programme models for including the last ten per cent. Collaboration between academia, government and NGO/CBOs should eb a requirement.