“I find it difficult to understand topics that were studied earlier. I have to work harder than anyone else. I ask my friends for their note books in order to study the earlier topics, but it is difficult. When I first came, they said: ‘You have failed the class; you have been absent for two months, the teacher is going to fail you.’ I cried a lot because of that.”
This is what nine-year old Ayse told researchers of the educational trade union Egitim-Sen who have studied the thousands of children who work as seasonal labourers. They experience these difficulties every autumn when school restarts.
13-year old Ismail says:
“When I stay away for four months, I cannot keep up with my friends; they do not want to play with me. That’s why I don’t want to go to school. Working affects my studies badly. I spend at least four months away. I am unsuccessful in some classes, and I have had to repeat a year three times. If my father had work, I would not have to go and I would not fail.”
11-year old Halime is worried because the money she and her family earn only pays the debts:
“We went to [pick the] cotton because we had a lot of debts. Then we paid them. We could not buy clothes. When people brought us clothes, we had no choice but to wear thme. My friends asked me, ‘Why are you wearing our clothes?’”
The study was carried out in the provinces of Sanliurfa, Adiyaman, Adan, Batman, Diyarbakir and Gaziantep, all areas were seasonal agricultural labour is common. The trade union looked at 115 primary schools in different districts.
The total number of pupils in these schools is 243,339. Of these, 23,683 pupils leave early and come back late because of seasonal work. This amounts to 9,82 percent of all students.
In Sanliurfa, the problem is the most pressing. In some neighbourhoods, one in five pupils has to leave school. With absences of over forty days being the average, some pupils are well above that and lose all chances of an education.
The time for seasonal work starts before the end of March and can last up to November.
Some of the problems these pupils have were summarised by the study: