Resources

The Education for All (EFA) goals (adopted in 2000) reflect the growing recognition that non-formal education (NFE) is no longer the peripheral domain of education for "marginalised" groups. Rather, NFE provides alternative learning opportunities for the vast majority of children, youth and adults in the developing world who do not have access to formal schooling. As well as ensuring that all children, particularly girls, have access to and complete  free  compulsory  primary  education  of  good  quality,  EFA  goals  also  include  the expansion and  improvement  of  early childhood care and  education, learning and  life-skills programmes, and basic and continuing education for all adults. It has long been acknowledged that timely and reliable data are essential for relevant education policy  and  planning. NFE is an area plagued by enormous information gaps. Thus, within the Dakar Framework for Action (2000), UNESCO's Section for Literacy and Non-Formal Education,  Division  of  Basic  Education,  in  close  collaboration  with  the  UNESCO  Institute  for Statistics, has taken a first step towards assisting countries to build a sound information base for NFE for systematic monitoring and planning. The  result  of  this  work  is  an  easy-to-use  methodology  for  setting  up  a  Non-Formal  Education Management Information  System  (NFE-MIS). This  includes  a  conceptual framework for NFE, prototype data collection tools, and guidelines for the development of NFE indicators as well as for data analysis. The methodology is presented in this Handbook using a practical, step-by-step approach.