Challenges to Schooling: The Voices of Street Working Children

This article sheds light on challenges to schooling based on a qualitative study of 24 street working children in Dilla town, Southern Ethiopia. The empirical data used in this study were gathered through repeated periods of fieldwork carried out in 2018 in Dilla town. The author used semi-participant observation, informal dialogue, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, and self-reported diaries to obtain the empirical data. This study has also benefited from various secondary sources. As the study shows, affording expenses to be at school, combining street work and schoolwork, perceived low returns on schooling, exclusions at school, and lack of helpful home environment are conditions that challenge children's schooling endeavors. Thus, a holistic approach is necessary to ease the challenges that stand in the way of educational services for street-working children. Particularly, there is a need to provide children the necessary material and moral support they deserve (including subsidies and school feeding programs), adopt a flexible school system/ learning approach that fit the needs of those for whom it is intended, create a safe learning environment (within and outside the classroom), ensure the quality of education to enhance the hope it holds for a better future and create a conducive home environment to offer incentives for the children to pay attention to schooling so that they will grow into adults who are capable of making positive contributions to the economic and social development of societies they are in.