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Education

Mobile pastoralists and education: strategic options

Shifting focus from tactics to strategy in the education of nomadic pastoralists

Authors: S. Krätli; C. Dyer
Publisher: International Institute for Environment and Development , 2009

Full text of document

Learners from nomadic pastoralist communities face peculiar difficulties in accessing and continuing with education programs which are designed for settled communities. This publication develops solutions to the challenges of delivering education to nomadic pastoralists. It is a literature review on the social, technical, economic and legal aspects of nomadic education.

The publication maps out the conceptual terrain of education and highlights successful and innovative approaches to education provision from around the world to generate new approaches to nomadic education. It identifies the following three areas of conceptual confusion:

  • the popular understanding of education, schooling, learning and rights
  • the trade-offs between school-based education and informal education
  • the trade-offs between school-based education and pastoral production.
The publication calls for a shift of focus from tactics to strategy in the approach to the challenges of including pastoralists in the education system. It is, however, important to ensure that flexibility and relevance are not sacrificed for cost-saving. It observes that there is growing awareness that:
  • the challenges faced in providing education to nomadic populations require special activities of Ministries of Education
  • including nomads in Education For All requires dedicated frameworks with a specific focus and a specific set of competencies
  • a shift to a new and responsive national strategy of educational inclusion is required.
The paper discusses successful innovative approaches to the provision of education in remote areas with nomadic populations. It also discusses the use of radio and media messages in the provision of education. The successful innovative approaches include the following:
  • family learning – which considers learning to be a social undertaking which combines adult basic education for parents with education for children
  • open and distance learning – which seeks to remove all unnecessary barriers to learning based on the principle that the provision of education must be flexible to enable as many people as possible to take advantage of learning opportunities
  • core curriculum – most distance education systems simply use radio as a replacement for the teacher. In order to maximize returns, the system should make use of the formal education curriculum.
In conclusion, the paper states that open distance learning should be harnessed as an overarching framework for a national education system, capable of integrating all options including conventional schooling.