Abstract
Children being gifts from God, occupy a very important place in the home and society therefore should be cared for and not neglected or abused. Hawking is one form of child labour that abuses the rights and privileges of the child. It is base on this light that this study examined the impact of street hawking on the Educational Development of the child among Primary school Teachers in Oredo LGA. Edo State
The study used a descriptive statistic. The targeted population comprised of all the Primary school Teachers from Oredo LGA, Edo State. A stratified random sampling technique was used to select 60 Primary school Teachers from 10 primary schools which gave a total of 60 respondents used for the study. The instrument used for data collection was a structured questionnaire, face and content validation of the instrument was carried out by an expert in order to ensure that the instrument has the accuracy, appropriateness and completeness for the study. The instrument used for this study was titled: Street hawking and child education questionnaire. The reliability coefficient obtained was 0.85 and this was high enough to justify the use of the instrument. The researcher subjected the data generated for this study to appropriate statistical techniques such as mean response analysis to answer the research questions. The study revealed that several factors were responsible for street hawking, also street hawking have a negative impact on the educational, behavioural and socio-emotional development of the child. The study concluded that Street hawking is caused by certain factors such as parental economic background, parental educational background, weak laws on child labour, poor governmental policies. Also, street hawking has a negative impact on the educational, behavioural and socio-emotional development of the child among Primary school Pupils in Oredo LGA, Edo State.
One of the recommendations was that in order to protect the rights of children and ensure their access to formal education, there is need for the Edo State government to implement and enforce strict anti-child labour laws. This should include penalties for parents and guardians who engage their children in street hawking during school hours.
