Nobody Ever Listened to Me - Chapter 7 'Education'

CHAPTER 7 - EDUCATION

UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 28: “State Parties recognize the right of the child to education, and with a view to achieving this right progressively and on the basis of equal opportunity, they shall in particular:
a) Make primary education compulsory and available free to all;
b) Encourage the development of different forms of secondary education, including general and vocational education, make them available and accessible to every child, and take appropriate measures such as the introduction of free education and offering financial assistance in case of need.
e) Take measures to encourage regular attendance at schools and the reduction of drop-out rates.”

Many street children who live in slums and spend the majority of the day on the street do not, almost by definition, go to school. For many children, there is no school to go to, or it is of poor quality or there are no regular teachers. For others, the poverty of the family drives the children to seek a means of supplementing the family income, and they drift away from school or are forced to leave school to earn money. Thus, the short term need to survive obstructs the long term need to be sufficiently educated to get the qualifications necessary to escape from abject poverty, and the cycle continues.

UNICEF produces an annual report entitled ‘State of the World’s Children’ with statistical analyses for each country of the world. One of the indicators is the percentage of children of primary school age enrolled in schools. The world average enrolment between 1996 and 2002 was 81%, but 46 million children were out of school in Sub-Saharan Africa (59% enrolled) and 35 million in South Asia (74% enrolled). Figures for 2007 showed that Sub-Saharan Africa had increased enrolment to 74% but the average actual attendance was only 62%. Enrolment in primary schools in South Asia had actually dropped from 74% to 65%. 2002 enrolment percentages in countries with historic high numbers of street children were:

Americas: Brazil 97%, Guatemala 84%, Haiti 54%, Mexico 100%, Peru 93% (USA 95%)
Africa: DRC 51%, Ghana 58%, Kenya 69%, Rwanda 67%, Sierra Leone 41%, Sudan 53%
South Asia: Afghanistan 36%, Bangladesh 89%, India 76%, Nepal 73%, Pakistan 56%
Eastern Europe: Romania 93%, Russia 93%, Ukraine 72%

Secondary school enrolment is very low in Sub-Saharan Africa - 26% - and in South Asia where 51% of boys and only 43% of girls enrol. Interestingly in Latin America more girls attend secondary school (74%) than boys (69%).

These statistics indicate a number of factors which may correlate with numbers and ages of street children. The comparatively high rate of education in Latin America, especially for primary school aged children, supports the view that the majority of street children found in Latin American cities average around 12 years plus, with a strong predominance of boys. The same trend seems to be evident in Eastern Europe.

However, in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia there are huge numbers of young children out of education and the average age of street children found in these continents is much younger and girls are more in evidence than in America or Europe. The low level of enrolment in Pakistan and India is particularly significant in view of the respective sizes of their populations. The fact that numbers out of school seems to have increased, according to UNICEF statistics, in the last five years is a major concern.

An estimated 101 million primary school age children were not enrolled in 2007 and UNICEF concluded that three regions of the world were unlikely to reach their Millennium Development Goals by 2015 - Middle East & North Africa; South Asia; and West & Central Africa.

Many of the children who enrol in Primary Schools do not complete the course, drop out or run away. Many, as previously mentioned, will be pressured by their families to support the family income out of economic necessity. Many cannot afford the minimal payments involved in schooling - uniforms, books and in some places, school fees. Other children run from school or attend irregularly because of the violence or bullying they encounter there. Many schools still employ corporal punishment not only as discipline for poor behaviour but also for perceived poor work. The study by the Indian Ministry of Women & Child Development, quoted in the previous chapter, identified the prevalent use of corporal punishment in many states, particularly for children aged between 5 and 12. Many children give beatings received at school as the reason for taking to the street.

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“Me mam and dad didn’t care if we went to school or not so sometimes we went and sometimes we didn’t. We moved around a lot when we were little so education was disrupted and we got into the habit of missing school. I’d have liked to have gone to school properly, get some qualifications and that.”
15 year old boy, Northern Ireland - Railway Children
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The completion of primary education and advancement to secondary education is seen as vital for the long term prospects of children and in countries where this has been difficult, one finds that most children are eager for such an opportunity. As well as providing income generating prospects for all children, the education of girls also improves family wellbeing and health and provides the necessary encouragement to provide education for their children. Given these principles, most NGOs working with street children give enormous importance to providing the children they encounter with some sort of education, even if in the first instance it is only the ability to read and write basics in their own language.

Many NGOs therefore - especially the large international organisations, often working co-operatively with government education departments, such as Save the Children, UNICEF, Plan International - provide non-formal educational facilities in the slums. Many smaller NGOs do similarly in specific local slum communities. Such facilities are usually primitive in that buildings are often of a temporary and flimsy nature and basically consist of one room, one teacher and a multitude of children aged anything between five and twelve years.

It is difficult in such circumstances to keep track of the children and monitor the achievements of individual children. Often such children are migrants and their families move on. Other children are irregular in attendance as they give priority to opportunities to earn money. Sometimes the slum and school is on land where the squatters are illegal and the landowner or municipal authority decide to move in with bulldozers and clear the settlement. The community scatters and such investment in the children’s education becomes lost. In some street kid communities, including those on refuse dumps, that are hard to reach in Cambodia, a local NGO sends out a yellow minivan that provides literacy lessons, rights education, medical care and games and recreation.

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Boupha is 16 years old. Her family lives in an extremely poor area of Sihanoukville, Cambodia. She no longer lives at home as her mother gambles and her father is violent. In the past, Boupha would miss school to look after her younger sisters and was often forced to sell vegetables to help support the family. “I worried that because I had missed so much school I would never get a good job and my family would always struggle. I saw my future full of poverty, fear and sadness. I felt afraid to stick up for myself and fight for my right to education. My dream has always been the same, to own my own land and house so I can look after my parents and sisters. I want to have a job so that I can earn a safe income and feel proud to have skills that support me and my family.”

Boupha first heard about M’Lop Tapang, an NGO with an extensive programme to over 600 street children, through its outreach work in the community. The outreach team encouraged Boupha to visit the drop-in centre, where she was able to share her problems with a trained counsellor.

“It gave me hope, confidence and stopped my feeling of fear and isolation. These people seemed to understand me and never passed judgment. It seemed they were very experienced at listening to my problems and offering me and others many choices to improve our lives. I knew that my life would change now that I had a chance and a channel into learning.”

Having returned to school to finish her studies, Boupha recently completed an embroidery course at M’Lop Tapang’s new vocational training centre. She is now hoping to start work at its small retail outlet by the beach, which provides a safe and steady form of income generation, particularly for those who are forced to work and beg on the streets. Without this help, Boupha thinks she would have ended up working in one of Sihanoukville’s karaoke bars, which can often lead to work in the sex industry. She is currently staying at the night shelter for girls but, with help from M’Lop Tapang, she hopes to return home soon. “When I have saved up enough money I would like to buy my own sewing machine and set up my own independent business - I would love to train former street youths like myself so they get a chance like I have now.”
Boupha, Cambodia, International Childcare Trust
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Part of the objective of such non-formal education is to equip the children for ‘mainstreaming’ to national education system schools. Most NGOs will keep records of children mainstreamed and some will follow up and record the drop-out rate. The Indian government has developed a ‘Bridge Course’ intended for use in non-formal schools to enable children to make the transition to formal education more effective.

However, the pressures of the family economy often lead to children dropping out. Others find the change from informal child-centred learning in the NGO schools to the often traditional large classes and rote learning, exam culture, still encountered in many systems too great a leap to make and fall away. Children living in slums often find it difficult to keep up, especially when homework becomes a necessity. Their home conditions are just not conducive to study.

Some NGOs provide evening classes in the non-formal school locations to give additional tuition or just provide a space and light where a child can do its homework. One NGO that ran non-formal schools beside the tracks at a number of stations on a Kolkata suburban railway found that the drop out rate was as high as 76% in the first year of mainstreaming and decided to provide the evening additional schooling facilities to address the problem. The following year, the drop out rate was only 12%.

A project many years ago in a slum in Nairobi decided to incentivise the children. The Director, somewhat foolishly, offered the children mainstreamed from his project a mountain bike if they achieved a place in the top ten of their class in the first year of state schooling. He was appalled to find that he owed fifteen bikes in the first year (the children were spread over several class ages) for which he had insufficient funds. The teachers apparently were equally put out, because these ‘illiterate’ street children outperformed the children they’d been teaching regularly for years ! The street children were of course highly motivated not just by the thought of the bikes but also their first opportunity to go to a ‘proper’ school. They were also highly competent at problem solving - they’d had a lot of essential practice on the streets - although in the following years they found the academic learning and perseverance needed for formal exams more taxing.

For children who have left home and taken to the streets full time, the situation is even harder. Such children rarely have the necessary documents to enable them to enrol in schools even if they wanted to. Many children do not even know their age or where they were born and have no birth registration. NGOs working for such children will usually try to take some basic schooling to where the children accumulate. This will involve a teacher or social worker - or even an ex street child street educator - sitting down with the children hanging around out in the open, or in a borrowed house, under a tree or other common location.

Some enterprising and innovative school locations have emerged. In India, because so many street children are found round India’s vast railway system, a number of NGOs run ‘platform schools’. At a pre-arranged time a teacher paid by the NGO will arrive on a designated platform on the station and the children will squat cross-legged on the platform for anything up to four hours - with appropriate breaks whenever a train pulls in, for the children will scramble up and go to earn money by carrying bags or scavenging for food or empty waterbottles in the train ! The materials used will be primitive - old newspapers and crayons, a few highly coloured posters - and activities will involve role play, story telling, drawing and painting as well as learning the alphabet and numbers. In such circumstances, the teacher or social worker will use the opportunity to try to establish each child’s reason for being on the street and try to help them see options for future development away from their present circumstances.

In Dhaka in Bangladesh, one enterprising NGO has negotiated a school on a ferry with the local ferry company - one ferry is usually in dock under routine repair and the company allows a room on this ferry to become the non-formal school for children in the dock area until the ship is ready for sailing and is replaced by another due maintenance.

More NGOs are now putting efforts into the stemming of children taking to the street by engaging with children in rural schools and teaching them about their rights and the risks children face on the streets including the lures of traffickers. For example, in the Indian State of Bihar, one of the poorest and where literacy levels are well below 50%, a number of NGOs provide after school recreation and child rights awareness in conjunction with the village community leaders and the women. Such initiatives need to evaluate the effectiveness of their programmes to ascertain whether widespread adoption of similar measures in countries where children migrate alone to cities will curb instances of children fleeing their rural homes.

Other NGOs put such a priority on formal education that they either provide residential homes from which the children are taken to school regularly or even provide their own formal schools working to an approved curriculum. Future Hope in Kolkata has four such schools for different age groups, boys and girls, where academic achievement is prized. A school in a children’s village in Vijayawada in south east India regularly puts its older boys through Standard 12 exams and many go on to university. A project run by a nun in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh targets young girls living with their families around the railway station or on the street, girls at high risk of being trafficked, and then houses them in a residential centre by the station and ensures their daily attendance at a good private school, while they maintain contact with their families being remaining close by. Other NGOs without residential facilities with which to support children attending mainstream schools offer placement in boarding schools to children who have no adequate or suitable family home.

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Javier had been living between the street and his home for quite some time as it was preferable to being neglected and ignored at home by his mother. When his mother moved to live with her boyfriend leaving him and an older brother alone, he moved out altogether. He was soon in trouble with the police for stealing and was eventually sent to the State Detention Centre. There he met Juconi´s educator and started to work towards being allowed to move to Juconi House, a half-way residential programme to prepare children and their families for reintegration.

In Juconi House Javier was aggressive, quick to take offence and constantly challenging educators. In individual therapeutic sessions, Javier´s educator introduced play therapy using sand trays to see if it could help him to explore his experiences and feelings about them. Gradually, Javier revealed a childhood of loss, fear and abandonment.

Javier had not got beyond 2nd grade of primary school and at 11 was illiterate. He found learning in a small group very difficult to manage, but responded well to one on one sessions. Learning to read and write seemed to give him confidence and he was keen to go to school. Educators used this to help motivate him to manage his behaviour and he soon started in a compensatory primary school programme where he was able to complete 2 school grades each year.

He made friends at school and in Juconi House his violent outbursts and tantrums became fewer and he became more cooperative to the point where he was happy to help younger children with their homework.

Javier stayed in Juconi House for just over 3 years during which time the team of family educators worked intensively with his mother and her partner. He has been back with his mother for a year and is now in 2nd grade of secondary school. His favourite subject is science and his ambition is to be a teacher or computer programmer.
Javier, Puebla - Juconi
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Of course, many street children have never had the opportunity for formal learning or have dropped out of education in the first or second years of schooling. It is not effective or reasonable to expect a 13 or 14 year old boy to sit down with six or seven year old children to learn to read and write, so most NGOs provide the opportunity to learn a skill or trade - vocational training. This will usually involve enough academic training in writing and arithmetic to be able to conduct a small business - to assess stock levels or account for income (a lot of street children seem to have acquired this knack without any academic learning!). Many NGOs now help children to run a children’s bank, partly to enable them to save in a place they trust and partly as ‘on the job’ learning of simple mathematics.

The traditional skills taught to children in such situations are sewing and tailoring, vehicle maintenance - especially cycles and motor cycles - carpentry, toy making, candle making, craftwork and screen printing. NGOS need to be aware of employment trends so that they teach children skills that will be in demand in the future and in India training in computer programming and the ability to create websites or undertake the making of menus, business cards, wedding invitations and the like are now well established.

Other skill training involves driver training - one Mumbai based NGO trained twenty ex street girls to be the first women taxi drivers in the city where they are now much in demand. The same NGO got the local police to train 50 young street women to be security guards in factories where mainly women were employed.

In Nairobi a local NGO has formed associations of children on the street, trained them in leadership, team work and some vocational skills, then helped them find legitimate work appropriate to the area where they lived. For example, they discovered that one group of youths hung around a bus station and occasional got tips for cleaning buses. The NGO got the bus company to train the children and then employ them as bus cleaners on a proper footing.

One NGO in Darjeeling was doing the traditional vocational training for girls who had been trafficked over the borders from Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and Bangladesh - sewing in particular - but they found this repetitive and not always adequate for the girls’ needs. They brought in an educational psychologist to find alternative ways of teaching the children, using concentration exercises and games, behavioural and anger management.

Music became a huge part of the programme and unexpectedly, the project team found that children who learned string instruments did very well. They introduced the children to classical music, found this very healing, and now teach the children to play the violin, guitar and various percussion instruments. Learning music together is great for helping them to play as a team and creates a bond between the children.

This same project rescues many girls from the sex trade and as the children are used to being ‘made up’, they are turning their experiences around by teaching them beautician’s skills and they are now receiving commissions for guests and the principals at weddings. Nurse training is another very fulfilling skill for the girls - helping others to recover from sickness is a healing process for themselves.

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The children are fanatical about music usually the local Pop & Hindi music, and when some of the local community approached us re teaching the children classical music we decided to go with it & see how they did. The children were totally not interested initially, so we got these guys to hold a concert for them, (after we had spent some time introducing them to classical music, both Indian & Western). When they saw the instruments making the music they had heard they were stunned!!! Some of our children who were hard core kids were literally glued to their seats. Afterwards there were two of them that had to go and feel the violins and just hold them, both these kids were from very disturbed backgrounds. There isn’t really an explanation, besides the fact that kids have to sit still and really concentrate on string instruments to learn to play them, but with violins in particular children who play them do particularly well academically.

When we were officially opening the houses, the children were only playing the instruments for a few weeks and had mastered playing the Indian /Irish national anthem’s which they played in front of the Irish ambassador to India. And then to the Director General of Police , West Bengal, with hundreds of people there. Some people say teaching the children Mozart etc is off the wall, we find teaching them classical music brings out so much good in them, their studies improve enormously and they are rehabilitated & come to terms with what has happened to them so much more quickly.

For example, when you teach the children gardening and bring plants and animals into their lives they are so placid and gentle with them (is it I wonder that they are creating something so beautiful and feel inside “yes I can do something beautiful” or the instruments, plants and animals give them no beatings or abuse, when they give love, they receive something beautiful in return. Whatever it is, it works wonders on the children who have spent their whole lives being abused, tortured, belittled, and suddenly they turn a corner for us.

There’s still a lot of work and counselling to do with them, but again they become more receptive, open and calmer to deal with and seem to heal quicker, when they eventually realize there’s a whole world there for them to explore & enjoy. A whole new world where they can get their childhood back go to school and stop having to look over their shoulder to make sure no one is going to abuse them anymore, it’s a wonderful sight to see.
Edith Wilkins - Darjeeling
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Whilst much activity takes place worldwide to improve access for street children to the different types of education, too little is documented about the success rate of these programmes. As well as knowing how many children have been mainstreamed to formal education, NGOs need to monitor how long they remain in education and the qualifications they attain. They need to know not just how many children go through vocational training courses, but monitor how many then get jobs and whether they are able to hold them down. Many different types of education are appropriate for street children in different circumstances but we need to learn the most effective experiences of these different educational options.