In terms of the country’s strong agricultural dependency, school calendars could be matched to farming calendars in relevant rural communities as a shorter-term policy measure that synthesizes working with schooling. Educational policies that do not consider local community needs can inadvertently have negative potential effects on rural livelihoods insofar as they may oblige some households to choose between either work or school. In raising the question during the interview about potentially modifying the school calendar to accommodate planting and harvest times, the Minister of Education responded that: “This idea of making the school terms match the farming seasons of the country has been examined. [...] the first NDC [National Democratic Congress] Government even asked that we look at the vacation periods; and even if we should have four terms, four academic terms within the year, so that the farming seasons—the minor season and the major season—will be set free for schools to release their students for work on the farms; [then] we should do so. [...] And, at any rate, we have land preparation periods and all sorts of periods related to farming.” Given the strong seasonal labor demands for children in farming families (Figure 3) and given the general societal acceptance of safe forms of child labor, education authorities need to consider adopting a flexible school calendar. Such a calendar could adjust starting dates and holiday periods to better reflect farming seasons, although it should, if adopted, only affect relevant communities: those mainly in the rural North with school-age children who are out of the school system, or go in and out of school during agricultural periods.<sup>33</sup> Such a policy measure, while it could possibly even increase children’s seasonal work on the farm, would help raise school participation.<sup>34</sup> Results here suggest that social programs designed to offset the opportunity costs of schooling and thus reduce the time spent in child labor are likely to have limited success if they do not target rural households with farming livelihoods, especially in the North. Existing demand-side policies need to be therefore reformed. First, the capitation grant – which was a key policy in stimulating school enrolment growth between 2004/05 and 2007/08 by helping households offset ‘private costs’ for schooling – needs to improve its targeting mechanism by transferring funds to Northerners instead of nationwide allocations. Spatially targeting Northerners would have much lower administrative costs than its current targeting structure. Such a reform would increase efficiency in implementing public resources and help achieve the policy’s objective of universalizing basic attendance while it would require no additional funding as grant allocations would simply be redistributed (see Krauss 2012). Second, Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) is a cash transfer program adopted in 2008 conditional on no child labor involvement, health visits and school attendance, but there is room for improved targeting efficiency by better targeting the program to Northerners as well (for an analysis of the program, see World Bank 2010a).<sup>35</sup> Third, a reformed School

> 33 Also, a study of African countries by Eagle (2006) finds that some children would not mind attending school on weekends in exchange for being able to take off on the market day, questioning also the appropriateness of the conventional Western weekend for all school contexts.

> 34 An example of such a scheme is the School For Life program in the North. School hours are agreed upon with the community and its school year has a nine month cycle and operates during the North’s dry season, allowing children to assist their parents on the farm during its rainy seasons (Akyeampong 2004). Field research illustrates that the program’s volunteer teachers who generally have some secondary schooling are hired locally and communities remunerate them with ‘soap money’, the equivalent of a few cedis per month or enough to purchase soap. Tens of thousands of children have been reached through the program who otherwise would have likely remained excluded from school (Akyeampong 2004). Scaling up this program especially in the North can be a viable policy option in the shorter term, with very low operational costs needed to increase attendance among out-of-school child laborers.

> 35 LEAP is aimed at positively discriminating selected poor families within the lowest quintile with income substitution – while field research illustrates that conditionalities are not always monitored or enforced.

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