Child Labour in Rivers State: Implications for Students’ Educational Development

The study examined the incidence of child labour in Rivers State and the implications for students’ educational development. Three objectives with corresponding three research questions were formulated to guide the study. The population of the study consists of 318 public senior secondary schools and 7,000 teachers in Rivers State Senior Secondary Schools board. The study adopted simple random sampling technique and made use of 30 public senior secondary schools and 300 teachers drawn from the three senatorial zones in Rivers State. The instrument used for the data collection was captioned “Child Labour in Rivers State and Implications for Students’ Educational Development Questionnaire (CLRSISEDQ)”. The reliability of the instrument was validated by two measurement and evaluation lecturers in the department of educational foundations in Rivers State University, while mean score was used to analyze the research questions and tables were used to organise the data. The result of the findings revealed that to a high extent various forms of child labour exist among students in public senior secondary schools in Rivers State. Also, to a high extent many factors are responsible for child labour among the students and finally to a high extent child labour impact negatively on the students and consequently, the educational development of the state. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others, that government should mandate the law enforcement agencies to arrest and prosecute culprits of child labour and parents should give birth to the number of children they can properly cater for.