No. 10 prohibited employment which prejudices children’s school attendance and set the age at 14. This link has almost fallen into oblivion and the recent global mobilization for the elimination of child labour has channelled attention to working children. The ILO-IPEC (International Programme for the Elimination of Chid Labour) has been set up to facilitate ‘a process geared to reform and change in social attitudes and in public and corporate policies that will lead to sustainable prevention and abolition of child labour from within a country.’41 Both prevention and abolition of child labour have imposed additional challenges upon education. Prevention of child labour necessitates a conceptual shift in the orientation of education towards the acknowledgment of one simple fact:’the unavoidable labour reality is very much local.’42 Any and every global or foreign model then has to be adapted to that local reality. The dominant trend in the conceptualization of human rights in the Western industrialized countries, which influenced international human rights law, defined work as access to employment in the formal sector. Self-employment in the informal sector (whether subsistence and entrepreneurship) emerged later and does not have, as yet, any clear-cut international human rights standards. The heritage of designing primary education so as to lead pupils to secondary and higher education does not make the situation better, on the contrary. Adaptability of education to selfemployment in the informal sector is often hampered by school curricula ‘developed centrally by groups of ‘experts’ who design them to prepare children for the next level of education to which many children will be unable to proceed.’43 The attractiveness of such education for pupils and their parents suffers in consequence. Creating opportunities for working children to ‘learn and 44 earn’ have been grounded in the necessity for poor people – including children – to work so as to be able to survive. Full-time education then appears to be a luxury rather than a basic right of the child, and changing that cruel reality requires a great deal of political and financial commitment. The Supreme Court of India has accepted this ‘learn and earn’ approach for non-hazardous employment of children below 14 years of age, mandating a reduction of daily working hours to six, coupled with at least two hours of education at the expense of the employer. For hazardous work, the Court has recalled that child labour could not be eliminated without tackling the underlying poverty and suggested ensuring work for an adult member of the family in lieu of the child or, if this is impossible within the limits of the economic capacity of the state, the provision of a minimum income to the family in order to enable them to send the child to school. This should be payable as long as the child attends school.45 43 41 ILO-IPEC Highlights of 1998, International Labour Organization – International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour, Geneva, October 1998, p. 6. 42 Atchoarena, D. & Hite, S. – Training Poorly Educated People in Africa, Document prepared for the International Labour Office (ILO) by the International Institute for Educational Planning, Paris, April 1999, p. 65. 34 Right to Education Primers No. 3 Haspels, N. et al. – Action against child labour: Strategies in education. Country experiences in the mobilization of teachers, educators and their organizations in combatting child labour, ILO-IPEC, Geneva, May 1999, p. 41. 44 ILO-IPEC – Action against child labour: The role of education, A briefing paper produced for Consortium Meeting on Secondary Education, Paris, 10 – 11 June 1999, p. 10.