Moses Kwadzo^1,, James Kofi Annan¹

Several concerns have been raised about child labor use in the fishery sector of Ghana. While some have argued that child labor should be abolished because it endangers the lives of children, others maintain that the use of children in agricultural work promotes their socioeconomic development. This study sought to assess the nature of child labor in Ghana and examine its effects on the academic outcomes of students in junior high schools in the Elmina community in the Central Region in Ghana. A total of 242 students from two junior high schools in the Elmina fishing community completed questionnaires for the study. The questionnaire results were analyzed using descriptive statistics and independent-sample t-tests. The findings revealed that 104 of the 242 students were involved in various fishery activities, including sorting, selling, dressing, and smoking of fish. The students were found to be working 12.3 hours per week and 3.3 days per week on average. Contrary to expectations, the independent-sample t-tests showed no statistically significant difference in aggregate examination mean scores for students involved in and students not involved in fishery activities. This observation could be attributed to the fact that the majority of the students involved in fishery activities engaged mainly in fishery activities that can be described as child work rather than child labor. This study recommends that households engaged in fishing consider limiting their children to light and regular fishing activities if the need arises to engage them, to avoid distraction from their education.

child labor, child work, fishery activities, academic outcome