Improving access to education for nomads was the focus of a forum held in northern Kenya in June 2006. The four-day "Forum on Flexible Education: Reaching Nomadic Populations in Africa" was held in Garissa, a community in a district populated by nomadic groups. It was organised by COL, the Commonwealth Secretariat's Social Transformation Programmes Division and Kenya's Ministry of Education, in collaboration with UNICEF Kenya.
Increasing educational opportunities for nomadic communities is a challenging as well as urgent issue. Nomads in Africa constitute about six percent of the continent's total population and are found in at least 20 countries. National education statistics show that education provision has failed to penetrate nomadic communities. For instance, in the essentially nomadic region of Kenya's North Eastern province (where the Forum took place), the Gross Enrolment Ratio is just 26%. If the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Education for All (EFA) initiative are to be achieved, education for nomadic communities must be expanded and improved.
The Forum provided an opportunity for experts and practitioners in the field to take stock of the situation, share best practices and make informed suggestions for the way forward in improving access, participation and completion of schooling. It focused on five themes:
- Ensuring basic Education for All
- Girls and women
- Teacher/facilitator training
- Skills training
- Government policy
More than 60 participants attended from Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda.
NOMADIC POPULATIONS: QUICK FACTS
- Commonwealth African countries with significant nomadic populations are Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda.
- Nomads are categorised into three major groups based on their mobile lifestyle: pastoralists, migrant fishermen and hunter-food gatherers. Because of specific characteristics, each of these groups presents different challenges to educators working to increase access to education and training opportunities.
- Nomadic groups are at the low end of national statistics in enrolment, participants, classroom performance, gender balance, achievement, progression to the next level of education and training.
Distance education is increasingly seen as a viable option to provide educational access to students who cannot pursue conventional, full-time education. When well implemented, it has the potential to tackle many of the educational challenges faced in regions such as Southern Africa. Several countries in the region have made significant progress with the establishment of new institutions or divisions within existing institutions to provide secondary education through distance learning. These institutions focus on preparing learners to secure sustainable livelihoods by improving their academic qualifications, and by providing training to create and maintain income-generating opportunities.
To share the emerging base of experience in open schooling, COL supported the establishment of an open schools consortium to focus on developing academic and vocational education programmes and materials. In July 2006, representatives from institutions and ministries offering education through distance learning in seven African countries met in Gaborone, Botswana to form the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Open Schooling Consortium. Hosted by the SADC Centre for Distance Education (SADC-CDE), the meeting was organised and supported by COL and MindSet Livelihoods, a non-profit South African organisation. The participants agreed to form the consortium, which will be housed by SADC-CDE. Mindset Livelihoods will coordinate fundraising and project implementation activities in collaboration with the other members.
The vision of the SADC Open Schooling Consortium is to provide a vehicle to initiate, design and implement collaborative projects to develop high quality distance education programmes (and accompanying materials drawing on different media as appropriate) at a secondary level. The programmes will be designed to secure sustainable livelihoods. The Consortium will facilitate peer-to-peer networking amongst practitioners working to deliver school-level education through open and distance learning (ODL). It will also develop proposals, source funding, and organise and manage joint programme and materials development at two key levels:
- Junior Secondary level - The focus will be on increasing access to quality programmes offered via distance education in order to provide educational opportunities to those large numbers of learners in the region leaving primary education and unable to secure places in the mainstream secondary schooling system.
- Senior Secondary level (learners from age 16-25) - The focus will be on designing high quality programmes that have a strong vocational orientation in order to prepare learners to secure sustainable livelihoods for themselves and their families.
The National Association of Distance Education and Open Learning in South Africa (NADEOSA) held its tenth anniversary conference in Tswane (Pretoria) in August 2006. More than 130 delegates from Southern Africa attended the conference, which focused on "Exploring the role of ICTs in addressing educational needs: identifying the myths and the miracles". The keynote speakers included COL President Sir John Daniel and Professor Nyameko Barney Pityana, Chairperson of the African Council of Distance Education and Vice Chancellor of UNISA.
University leaders from across the Commonwealth met at Dudhope Castle in Dundee, Scotland in August 2006 for an intensive four-day conference focused on leadership and management in science and innovation. Organised by the University of Abertay Dundee in partnership with the Association of Commonwealth Universities, COL and the Scottish Executive, the conference attracted university leaders from Cameroon, Ghana, Guyana, India, Namibia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. (more information in In Focus article)
THIRTEEN EDUCATORS FROM CAMEROON, GHANA, NIGERIA, SIERRA LEONE AND THE GAMBIA TOOK PART IN A FOUR-DAY TRAIN THE TRAINER WORKSHOP ON INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN IN JUNE 2006 AT THE REGIONAL TRAINING AND RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING (RETRIDAL) AT THE NATIONAL OPEN UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA (NOUN). THE PARTICIPANTS WILL CONTINUE TO BUILD INSTRUCTIONAL DESIGN EXPERTISE BY HOSTING WORKSHOPS FOR FELLOW ACADEMICS IN THEIR RESIDENT INSTITUTIONS/COUNTRIES.
COL and the Consortium for Educational Communication (CEC) recently hosted a five-day training workshop on adaptive learning for 25 academics from different institutions across India. The workshop was led by Dr. Nishikant Sonwalkar, an expert in technology-assisted learning formerly from the Educational Media Creation Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Sonwalkar introduced his adaptive learning system, which caters to five different learning styles. In addition to building capacity in eLearning, this workshop promoted the Indian priority of national integration among the remotely located and post-conflict states.
CEC held its second National Convention at the University of Pune on 5 June 2006. Also supported by COL, the convention focused on "Development and Distribution of eLearning Resources". COL Vice President Professor Asha Kanwar gave a keynote address at the convention.
COL has facilitated training for some 250 teachers through CEC, teaching them how to develop digital Learning Objects. As a result, there are more than 500 open source Learning Objects now available on the CEC Learning Object Repository on the CEC website, with many more developed and ready for uploading.
www.cec-ugc.org
PAN-COMMONWEALTH FORUM ON OPEN LEARNING
30 OCTOBER - 3 NOVEMBER 2006
OCHO RIOS, JAMAICA
THEME: ACHIEVING DEVELOPMENT GOALS: INNOVATION, LEARNING, COLLABORATION & FOUNDATIONS.
www.col.org/pcf4
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16TH CONFERENCE OF COMMONWEALTH EDUCATION MINISTERS (CCEM)
11-14 DECEMBER 2006
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA
THEME: ACCESS TO QUALITY EDUCATION: FOR THE GOOD OF ALL
In addition to the meeting of Commonwealth Education Ministers, this year's conference will include separate forums for stakeholders, teachers and youth. It will also feature the first Education Good Practice Awards, a programme that recognises good and promising practices in education in the Commonwealth's 53 member countries.
Mrs. Graça Machel will be a keynote speaker at the CCEM. Known as a tireless advocate for children and women, and a major force on behalf of worldwide literacy, she is also considered to be a foremost authority on the impact of conflict on children. Mrs. Machel was Mozambique's first post-independence Minister of Education and is currently Chair of the Foundation for Community Development and a member of the Board of Directors for the United Nations Foundation.
www.16ccem.com