This page explains key concepts in Non-Formal Education

The EC (2001) Communication on Lifelong Learning:

European Commission (EC) (2001) Communication: Making a European Area of Lifelong Learning a Reality, http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/education/life/ index.htm, accessed March 2002
Formal learning
Is learning typically provided by an education or training institution, structured (in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support) and leading to certification. It is intentional from the learner's perspective.

Non-formal learning
Learning that is not provided by an education or training institution and typically does not lead to certification. It is, however, structured (in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support).

Informal learning
Is learning resulting from daily life activities related to work, family or leisure. It is not structured (in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support) and typically does not lead to certification.

UNESCO (1972) Learning to Be (prepared by Faure, E. et al), Paris: UNESCO p. 182
Learning resulting from daily life activities related to work, family or leisure. It is not structured (in terms of learning objectives, learning time or learning support) and typically does not lead to certification. Informal learning may be intentional but in most cases it is non-intentional (or "incidental"/ random) (p32-33).

Formal education
The hierarchically structured, chronologically graded 'education system', running from primary school through the university and including, in addition to general academic studies, a variety of specialised programmes and institutions for full-time technical and professional training.

Non-formal education:
Is any organised educational activity outside the established formal system - whether operating separately or as an important feature of some broader activity - that is intended to serve identifiable learning clienteles and learning objectives.

Informal education:
The truly lifelong process whereby every individual acquires attitudes, values, skills and knowledge from daily experience and the educative influences and resources in his or her environment - from family and neighbours, from work and play, from the market place, the library and the mass media.

Background

*Fordham (1993) relates, in 1967 at an international conference in Williamsburg USA, ideas were set out for what was to become a widely read analysis of the growing 'world educational crisis' (Coombs 1968). There was concern about unsuitable curricula; a realization that educational growth and economic growth were not necessarily in step, and that jobs did not emerge directly as a result of educational inputs. Many countries were finding it difficult (politically or economically) to pay for the expansion of formal education.

*Formal educational systems had adapted too slowly to the socio-economic changes around them and that they were held back not only by their own conservatism, but also by the inertia of societies themselves. If we also accept that educational policy making tends to follow rather than lead other social trends, then it followed that change would have to come not merely from within formal schooling, but from the wider society and from other sectors within it. It was from this point of departure that planners and economists in the World Bank began to make a distinction between informal, non-formal and formal education.

*As Graham-Brown (1991: 64) says, dividing formal education from out of school education or so-called non-formal education is artificial in many ways. But in some countries, this division reflects the gulf between government provision through the school system, on the one hand, and the needs and interests of marginal populations who are most alienated from the system on the other.

*Contrasts between 'formal' and 'non-formal' programmes.Simkins (1976) analysed non-formal education programme in terms of purposes, timing, content delivery systems and control, and contrasted these with formal educational programmes. The resulting ideal-types provide a useful framework - and bring out the extent to which non-formal education initiatives, while emphasizing flexibility, localness and responsiveness remain located within a curricula form of education (in contrast with those forms driven by conversation).

*One of the enduring themes in the literature of non-formal education has been that the education provided should be in the interests of the learners and that the organization and curriculum planning should preferably be undertaken by the learners themselves: that it should be `bottom up'. It is also often argued that this should empower learners to understand and if necessary change the social structure around them.

Bibliography

Coombs, P. (1968) The World Educational Crisis, New York, Oxford University Press.

Coombs, P. (1985) The World Crisis in Education, New York: Oxford University Press.Coombs, P. with Ahmed, M. (1974) Attacking Rural Poverty, Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

Fordham, P. E. (1993) 'Informal, non-formal and formal education programmes' in YMCA George Williams College ICE301 Lifelong Learning Unit 2, London: YMCA George Williams College.

Graham-Brown, S. (1991) Education in the Developing World, Harlow: Longman.Jeffs, T. and Smith, M. K. (eds.) Using Informal Education. An alternative to casework, teaching and control?, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

McGivney, V. and Murray, F. (1991) Adult Education in Development. Methods and approaches from changing societies, Leicester: NIACE.

Rubenson, K.(1982) Interaction Between Formal and Non-Formal Education Paris, Paper for Conference of the International Council for Adult Education.

Tight, M. (1996) Key Concepts in Adult Education and Training, London: Routledge.

UNESCO (1972) Learning to Be (prepared by Faure, E. et al), Paris: UNESCO