Breathing New Life into Education for Life: A Reconceptualisation of Non-Formal Education with a Focus on the Melanesian Pacific.

Overview & Synopsis

Melanesian education systems generally reflect the biases of their former Western colonial masters in that formal education is regarded as a means of preparing for employment in a formal market economy. This bias is evident in resource allocation, with formal education getting the lion's share of education spending. Focusing on the market economy marginalizes indigenous culture and renders invisible the totality of nonmarket production, including subsistence production and care of family members, done primarily by women. Even nonformal education is biased toward the market sector. Most courses are oriented toward vocational skill development or income generation. Male students outnumber females by two to one, reflecting the reality that nonmarket production is women's work and not the primary focus of nonformal education. But Melanesian policymakers and practitioners are working to forge a nonformal education system that better meets the needs of their rural majority. All the Melanesian states are developing qualifications frameworks that seek to integrate vocational training and rural skills development into a unitary structure, giving legitimacy to nonformal education. Recognition by Western development agencies of the importance of nonmarket production and the role women play in this work will facilitate recognition of nonformal education as integral to improving the quality of life as well as economic development. A review of nonformal education in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji discusses rural dependence on subsistence activities, school enrollment, literacy, vocational training, qualifications frameworks, women's programs, and the contributions of nongovernmental organizations. (Contains 46 references.) (TD)