Poverty and Child Labour in Australia

This article discusses the contemporary issue of poverty and child labour in Australia and its impact on early childhood education. It highlights the lack of commitment from the Australian government in addressing this issue and the need for stronger child labour laws. The article also explores the negative effects of child labour on education and the potential causes of child labour, such as poverty and lack of affordable education. Overall, it emphasizes the importance of protecting children from the risks of child labour and ensuring their access to quality education.

Children, Education, Settings and Society
Children, Education, Settings and Society
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Children, Education, Settings and Society
Poverty and Child labour as a contemporary issue in Australia
The social media used to obtain the information is the Television and the newspapers in
Australia. The issue of poverty and child labour in Australia prevents the students from
accessing early childhood education in the nation. The newspapers are in frontline advertising
and calling the Australian government to intervene the matter. On another hand Television
programs are now calling the Australian government to induce new procedures that will help
in handling child labour and poverty in the country. Child labour and reluctance of the
Australian government to have a commitment in the child labour laws is one of the
contemporary social cultural issue that affect the early childhood education in Australia.
According to the article by Wilkins, Warren, Hahn and Houng (2011) a research by
University of Adelaide experts suggests that Australia, among the developed countries, has
lagged behind by not putting a signature on the international convention on the minimum age
required for workers. South Australia on the other hand has also remained behind by not
having adequate child labour laws. A professor from the school of law in the University of
Adelaide terms the Australian’s position on the minimum age for workers as an international
embarrassment. Professor Rosemary Owens’ speech on the world day against child labour
was recorded on an online newspaper and here are her words,
"Australia is one of only 20 member countries that have not yet signed the Minimum Age
Convention of 1973, which underpins the International Labour Organization's (ILO's)
Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. This is one of the conventions
established by the ILO which ensures that countries are committed to the effective abolition
of child labour" (Craig & Mullan, 2016).
Some of regulations for child labour section in law include;
Australia's War Crimes Act (1945).

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Child Employment Act 2006 (NSW).
Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Cth).
The professor is a globally recognised labour law expert and he works with the committee
of the International Labour Organization. The ILO is a United Nations special agency whose
main role is to see to it that proper working conditions and standards are maintained in the
whole world.
The professor says that the convention which sets the minimum working age at sixteen
years has been signed by most developing and the developed countries including the United
Kingdom with only Australia, United States, Canada and New Zealand being the notable
exceptions. She says that the Australian government has been talking about the child labour
issue for several years but so far, there has not been any concrete resolution taken. She points
out how most of the Australian states have child labour laws, some of which are very strong
but their regulations have not yet been standardised from one state to another.
The South Australian government has formed regulations such as education policies
regulating education system so as to prevent the young school children aged between five and
sixteen years from getting employed at a time they are supposed to be in school. The law
however does not prevent the children from working after the normal school hours which
affects their next day in school. They may feel tired and reluctant to go to school. This
example illustrates the lack of a legal framework in child labour that can protect the children
from risks that might lead them to unhappy and unhealthy lives and eventually dropping out
of school.
Literature review.
The effects of child labour in early childhood education is a globally recognised issue. The
issue has been of great concern in the 21st century due to the fact that most national education
sectors have not included the issue of child labour in their strategy plans and that there are

Children, Education, Settings and Society
some educational programmes on child labour that have failed to sufficiently address the
importance of regular school attendance to school children (Wilkins, 2015)
A research by the International Labour organization indicates that child labour and
education are interconnected. It suggests that child labour is negatively correlated to
achievement of education goals. According to (Baxter and Hewitt, 2013) Child labour lowers
enrolment ratios in primary and the overall school. (Acosta, 2011) also suggests that time
spent by a child working in a day negatively affects his or her capacity to attend school. Long
working hours lead to an increase in the school attendance gap. The rural schools are the
most affected here. The school attendance is dependent on the work status of the child. Since
boys and girls tend to do different jobs, the work patterns are gender specific. Girls for
instance are tasked with household activities and sometimes they may have to bear the burden
of working both inside and outside the household thus leaving a little time for school
attendance. Child labour is also associated to lower literacy rates among the children.
According to (Huijsmans & Baker, 2012), there is a huge connection between economic
activity levels of children between the age of seven and fourteen and the literacy rates of the
youths in their mid to late teen age.
The combination of education and work often reduces the performance of the student. As
evidenced by Jorgensen, Lai and Hauschild (2011) most school children who get engaged in
work are likely to repeat grades and drop out before finishing the primary education. This is
obviously due to the lack of concentration in class as a result of the stress that the child
undergoes at the work place.
As much as child labour is blamed for its impact in the education sector, its potential
causes should not be ignored. (Morrow, V. 2010) suggests that most children are usually
pushed to take up work due to lacking affordable and good quality education. In most rural

Children, Education, Settings and Society
areas for instance, the provision affordable education may end up at the primary level. This
affects the child since he or she may think that there is no need to complete the primary level
if at all there is no high school to attend. Many countries, Australia being inclusive, have
eliminated the burden of paying fees for basic education but the challenge that still remains in
most countries is the costs associated with education. These include traveling expenses, food
at school, buying books and other necessities in school. Most poor families cannot afford this
and therefore they end up sending their children to work. Besides, children usually lack a
clean and quality learning environment that consists of qualified teachers and an optimum
school population. A research by UNESCO shows that the child labour rates are highly
associated with the lower values in the Education Development Index (Wilkins, Warren,
Hahn & Houng, 2011).
The ratio (3:5) of girls to the number of boys involved in child labour varies from time to
time. According to the international Labour Organization records, there has been a fall in the
number of children especially girls that are involved in child labour. In Australia for instance,
since the year 2000, there has been a 40% reduction in the number of girls in child labour as
compared to the 25% for boys. This in turn affects the overall performance of the boys in
school when compared to the performance of the girls. This difference according to increases
with age. Between the ages of five and fourteen, the number of boys involved in child labour
in Australia is similar but at an older age of above sixteen, more boys are engaged in the child
labour activities (Edmonds & Schady, 2012).
Generally, research findings indicate that child labour leads to low primary enrolment
ratios, low school attendance rates whereby the rate of attendance for the working children is
half that of non-working children and subsequent reduction in the performance of the affected
children (Basu, Das & Dutta, 2010). The main cause of this child labour is poverty. Children

Children, Education, Settings and Society
usually drop out of school and force their way into the labour market only to end up in
occupations that would lessen their chances of dealing with poverty.
My reflection.
In this research, one of the new things learnt was that the main cause child labour in
Australia is poverty alongside the Australian government failing to protect the children
against this abuse (Acosta, 2011). Although Australia is a developed country, there are still
some families that cannot afford to offer their children some quality education. Some can just
afford catering for the school expenses up to the primary level only (Khanam & Ross, 2011).
Although the government has implemented free primary and secondary school education, the
costs associated with schooling are sometimes too expensive to be afforded by the poor
families. As a result of this, the affected children sort to work in various labour firms to cater
for their expenses. Poverty also makes children to lose the hope of schooling at a very early
age (Diette, Markson,Skinner, Nguyen, Algatt-Bergstrom & Wu, 2010). The Government
also has a hand in the child labour issue. It has failed to sign the international convention for
child labour rights that dictates that the minimum working age should be at sixteen years. As
a result, many labour firms have taken advantage of this cheap labour from young children
thus leading to an increase in the child labour rates (Marcoux, 2018).
From the above research, several consequences of child labour in early childhood
education were learnt. These include low enrolments in school, low school attendance and
generally, a lower performance by the student due to multi-tasking. This activity also affects
the future of the child since he or she ends up in an occupation that pays poorly and the cycle
of poverty comes in again. The boy child is more affected in this activity than the girl child.
The statistics from ILO revealed that more boys are involved in child labour activities than
girls. This is indeed reflected in the national performance of the boys as compared to that of

Children, Education, Settings and Society
the girls. Besides, I also learnt that rural areas, due to underdevelopment are more affected by
the child labour issue than the more developed parts of the country.
During the exercise, a few challenges were encountered. During the review some articles
provided statistics that were different from others under a similar subject. Some for instance
suggested that the total percentage of children affected by child labour is approximately 11 %
of the total Australian population while others went as high as 30%. Here I had to use a
variety of research articles to ascertain the figures. Another challenge is that the challenge
was to be carried out independently. This therefore meant that the whole research process
was very hectic. The process of searching for different articles which are located in different
place was tiresome (Diette, Markson, Skinner, Nguyen, Algatt-Bergstrom, Wu, 2010).
From the concept analysed in the paper is that aspect of poverty and increased child labour
results to increased illiteracy. The study has clearly described on the effects of poverty and
child labour on accessing early child hood education in Australia. It’s now clear that
Australia as a country should focus on uplifting the economic base of the country thus
allowing students to access education.

Children, Education, Settings and Society
References.
Acosta, P. (2011). School attendance, child labour, and remittances from international
migration in El Salvador. Journal of Development Studies, 47(6), 913-936.
Acosta, P. (2011). School attendance, child labour, and remittances from international
migration in El Salvador. Journal of Development Studies, 47(6), 913-936.
Basu, K., Das, S., & Dutta, B. (2010). Child labor and household wealth: Theory and
empirical evidence of an inverted-U. Journal of development economics, 91(1), 8-14.
Baxter, J., & Hewitt, B. (2013). Negotiating domestic labor: Women's earnings and
housework time in Australia. Feminist Economics, 19(1), 29-53.
Craig, L., & Mullan, K. (2016). Parenthood, gender and work‐family time in the United
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Diette, G. B., Markson, L., Skinner, E. A., Nguyen, T. T., Algatt-Bergstrom, P., & Wu, A. W.
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Edmonds, E. V., & Schady, N. (2012). Poverty alleviation and child labor. American
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Huijsmans, R., & Baker, S. (2012). Child trafficking:‘Worst form’of child labour, or worst
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Children, Education, Settings and Society
Jørgensen, A., Lai, L. C., & Hauschild, M. Z. (2011). Assessing the validity of impact
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