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Beyond child rights

Is schooling really in the best interest of African children and their families?

School children
Is schooling really in the best interests of African children and their families?
Photo:
Commonwealth Secretariat

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Marguerite Daniel
Associate Professor and Director, International Master's in Health Promotion
Department of Health Promotion and Development
University of Bergen

The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) states that children have the right to education, it describes the nature of the education they should receive and it also states that children should be protected from participating in hazardous and exploitative labour. In addition, the second Millennium Development Goal aims to achieve universal primary education by 2015, a strategy which is heavily supported by the World Bank with particular emphasis on the benefits of educating girls. Few studies have explored the views of local families and communities, particularly in Africa, on the drive to school children.

This lecture will explore the views of local people in two communities in different regions of Africa on the value of schooling in terms of i) the quality of available schooling and its opportunity cost, and ii) the outcomes. Findings show that parents in contexts of poverty need the income or produce their children can generate simply for the family to survive; parents develop strategies to ‘rotate’ children through school and to avoid the judgement of the authorities. The outcomes of available education do little to promote employment or opportunities to escape poverty.  

Marguerite Daniel holds a PhD in Development Studies from the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. She is a member of the research group: Multicultural Venues in Health, Gender and Social Justice at UiB.