I would like to be able to support the idea that school creates a barrier to child labour, and perhaps is even the solution to eliminating it. This common, widespread perception is surely a source of hope for anyone dismayed by the prevalence of working children in the world today. But it does not stand up to empirical evidence.
At first glance, school or work can seem to be a question of either/or. In West Africa, for example, the majority of working children are not in formal school, and the majority of children fully enrolled in formal school are not working on the side. But if you look closer at the lives of working children, you find a more complex relationship at work. On the one hand, it is clear that school in itself is not enough to protect children from being put to work. And, on the other, for many young people working is essential for the continuation of their education, and not only in financial terms.
This text offers readers a chance to take seriously what working children and adolescents in West Africa tell us. Where are they with school and education, and what could be done today to support their education and integration into society? Their answers show us how reductive it is to still think of school and work as two (strictly) separate realms.
