Non‐formal education, out‐of‐school learning needs and employment opportunities: evidence from Mali

Abstract

Non‐formal education (NFE) is now considered as playing a critical role in the achievement of the objective of Education for All, by reaching the learning needs of youth and adults who do not have access to formal education, increasing their employment opportunities and therefore contributing to poverty alleviation. Yet there is still insufficient knowledge available on the relationships between NFE, learning needs of out‐of‐school youth and adults, and employment. This paper intends to contribute to the debate by discussing both the data collected in rural Mali and the evidence drawn from a household survey on the outcomes of the Educational Centres for Development (Centres d’éducation pour le développement – CEDs), which address out‐of‐school youth in rural areas. This paper argues that the effective approach of the CED programme is similar to formal schooling, with some adjustments in order to meet what is considered as the specific learning needs of out‐of‐school youth. However, CEDs are more adapted to boys' learning needs than they are to girls'. This paper also demonstrates that the CED programme has no effect on the scope of activities of young people as they stay in their village but do improve the way these activities are carried out and widens their employment opportunities as they migrate.

Keywords:

• non‐formal education
• learning needs
• employment
• rural
• Mali
• Africa

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Pauline Rose and to the Compare team for their continuous support and valuable remarks throughout the elaboration of the present article. Thanks are also due to Michel Carton and Kathryn Touré for their comments on its earlier versions.

Notes

1. Those interviews were made in partnership with the Graduate Institute of Training and Applied Research (Institut Supérieur de Formation et de Recherche Appliquée, University of Bamako) in the framework of doctoral research on the links between diversification of basic education provision and professional integration in rural Mali. More interviews that were conducted in July 2008 on the educational and professional trajectories of young people who enrolled in formal education are being analysed. The fieldwork has been funded by the Swiss Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries and by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (Geneva, Switzerland).

2. According to UNESCO (2007), GER reaches 33% for lower secondary education, 13% for upper secondary education and 3% for tertiary education (data for year 2004–5).

3. Formal education includes public schools, private schools, médersas and community schools. The distribution of the students who attend non‐state formal primary education is as follows: 9.1% private schools, 17.3% médersas and 11.4% community schools (CPS 2006).

4. As a rough guide, let us indicate that the 13–18 age group reaches 1,827,000 in Mali, according to the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008 (UNESCO 2007).

5. This quote and all the following were translated from French by the author.

6. In 2003, all the CEDs (except the centres supported by NGOs) repeated the first year of the programme. The reason given then was that the CEDs did not start everywhere in due time. As a result, the basic education phase lasted five years instead of the programmed four years.