Can non-formal education keep working children in school? A case study from Punjab, India.

This paper analyses the effectiveness of non-formal schools for working children in Jalandhar, Punjab, India, in mainstreaming child labourers into the formal education system through incentivised, informal schooling. Using a family fixed effects model and sibling data as an equivalent population comparison group, I find that the non-formal schools effectively provide an alternative to formal primary education and also show high success rates of mainstreaming and maintaining children into post-primary education relative to the control group. I find that the children within the non-formal schools are 40.47-50.07% more likely to still be studying relative to the sibling-inclusive control group, and have 1.976 to 3.389 years less of a gap in educational attainment. I conclude that the child labour schools are serving a useful function in helping poor children attend school, regardless of their labour status. The policy implications explored suggest that aspects of the techniques used in the non-formal schools should be applied more broadly to the formal schooling system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]