Do working children have worse academic performance?

To examine the effect of child labor on school children's academic performance.

Primary school children engaged in child labor were compared with age, sex and school-matched controls for absence from school and scores obtained at sessional examination in English language, Mathematics, Sciences and Social studies.

There was no significant difference in the mean rate of school absence (p = 0.80), mean aggregate examination scores (p = 0.1) and proportion of class repeaters (p = 0.16) among working school children and the controls. However, a significantly higher proportion of the controls had high (>75%) average examination scores compared with the working school children (p = 0.017). Similarly, the controls performed better than working school children in each of four core subjects but significant differences were observed only in Social Studies and Science (p = 0.006 and 0.001 respectively).

There is some undermining of academic performance among children who combine schooling with child labor despite comparable school absence with the controls.