The study aims to analyze the linkage between education and child labour, especially those engaged in the worst forms of labour.
Some key findings of the study:
1. Education policies versus school/classroom policies and practices. Although education department receives high allotment from the national budget, not all of the funds are used for them. Forty percent of the budget goes to debt servicing while only 60 percent goes to salaries of teachers and other expenditures of the bureaucracy. The study found out that in some schools, children were asked to contribute to the making of a school bathroom, school gate/fence as well as make class projects like chairs and bookshelves for their classroom.
The law also says that children ages 6-11 years old have the right to quality and free elementary education. However, poor and disadvantaged regions like CAR, ARMM, Eastern, Southern and Central Mindanao have the low enrollment rates. Free elementary education is only tuition fee. Other school-related expenses like school projects/ assignments, lunch/snacks and transportation have to be shouldered by parents.
2. Education policies and practices versus socio-economic, cultural and demographic conditions and barrier to the education of working children/child labour. Parents and guardians in the survey grew up working and helping their parents/grandparents fulfill the subsistence needs of their families. They argued that they could not send their children to school because they needed the income of the child. However, in the Philippines it is observed that a girl child schooling is often postponed, delayed or not addressed because she is needed at home to care for her other siblings or support the schooling of her younger brother or sister.
Most of the families of working children suffer from insecurity of tenure in their housing/home lot and insecurity in livelihood sources. They often have large family/ household sizes. These working children often ended out of school due to: tiredness/fatigue because of lack of sleep and long working hours; physical/verbal abuse of teachers and classmates.
In the end, the study concluded that most of the education policies and programs from the national and local government, in general, have not reached nor responded adequately to the disadvantaged sectors of the population, most especially the children and families of the child labourers. It recommends therefore, that advocacy be done to make the education needs of child labour a key aspect of the pro-poor education programs, especially for the “education for all” commitments of the government, and in the “Education for all-Philippine Plan of Action.”
