ABSTRACT

This study sought to investigate the relationships among child labour, access to education, retention in school and academic achievement among secondary school students in Mukono District of Uganda. Based on the reviewed literature, five research questions were raised to guide the study while four hypotheses were tested. The study used a correlation research design. A sample of 600 secondary school students was composed through multistage sampling that involved both stratified random sampling and simple random sampling. Data collection was done using a validated, pre-tested and reliable questionnaire titled Child Labour, Access and Retention Questionnaire (CARQ) and an Academic Achievement Scores Table (AAST). Cronbach’s alpha statistic was used to compute the internal consistency reliability of the questionnaire, with an index of 0.82, 0.82 and 0.70 for Sections A, B, and C respectively, and an overall reliability index of 0.78. Descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) were used to present data for research question one while multiple linear regression and Pearson correlation were used to analyze data for research questions two, three, four and five respectively. Hypotheses were tested using the t-test statistic at p