Non Formal Education And Development

This book is the first comprehensive account of developments in open and distance non-formal education in developing countries for over more than 20 years. It includes many instructive and inspiring examples of how international agencies such as UNESCO, FAO, WHO, UNICEF, USAID and the Commonwealth of Learning and national providers are using radio, TV, online and mobile learning, telecentres and other means to achieve the Education for All, Millennium Development and Sustainable Development Goals. It describes the educational needs of the world’s most disadvantaged, vulnerable and least formally educated children, youth and adult populations, including the disabled, refugees and prisoners. It also reports on the successes, outcomes, constraints and shortcomings of using open and distance methods and technology to deliver literacy and numeracy programmes, equivalency, ‘second chance’ or alternative schooling, life skills and rural community development programmes and income generation and vocational training outside the framework of the formal education system. It concludes with suggestions for the extension and improvement of such lifelong learning. Designed to encourage further research and development in these capacity-building practices outside the established formal system, this is a must-read for all policy-makers, managers, educators, students and researchers interested in non-formal education for individuals, families and communities in the developing world.

Volume numbers determined from Scope of the guidelines, p. 12-13.

If total human development is the ultimate goal of education, non - formal education can be built into the life and work of people in order that their diverse learning needs are fulfilled as and when required.

The Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC) at the University of Hong Kong is proud and privileged to present this book in its series CERC Studies in Comparative Education. Alan Rogers is a distinguished figure in the field of non-formal education, and brings to this volume more than three decades of experience. The book is a masterly account, which will be seen as a milestone in the literature. It is based on the one hand on an exhaustive review of the literature, and on the other hand on extensive practical experience in all parts of the world. It is a truly comparative work, which fits admirably into the series Much of the thrust of Rogers' work is an analysis not only of the significance of non-formal education but also of the reasons for changing fashions in the development community. Confronting a major question at the outset, Rogers ask why the terminology of non-formal education, which was so much in vogue in the 1970s and 1980s, practically disappeared from the mainstream discourse in the 1990s and initial years of the present century. Much of the book is therefore about paradigms in the domain of development studies, and about the ways that fashions may gloss over substance.

There is growing recognition that non-formal education (NFE) can play an important role in providing basic education for disadvantaged children and young people. However, development agencies and governments face difficult questions about how to manage the relationship between NFE and the formal education system. This paper offers strategies to support and expand the provision of quality non-formal basic education without compromising its innovation and responsiveness to the needs of different groups.The paper first provides an overview of the history of debates, ideological perspectives and practice in NFE, and outlines key areas of relationships between NFE and the education field as a whole. It draws on examples from Mali, Mexico, Tanzania, India, Namibia, Burkina Faso, Trinidad and Tobago, Somaliland, Brazil, South Africa and the Latin American Fey y Alegria (Faith and Joy) movement.