Evolving approaches to educating children from nomadic communities

Evolving policies have increasingly aimed to include nomadic groups in EFA, but an overemphasis on mobility has distracted policy makers from going beyond access logistics to consider learning needs within nomads’ contemporary livelihoods and cultural values. Notable global trends are the growth and institutionalization of forms of Alternative Basic Education (provided by state and nonstate actors for “disadvantaged” learners) and advocacy of Open and Distance Learning. Case studies of mobile pastoralists in Kenya, India, and Afghanistan, and of sea nomads in Indonesia, illustrate policy and practices on the ground. They highlight a need to address equality, equivalence, and learner progression more closely, rather than adopting strategies for education inclusion that reinforce nomadic groups’ sociopolitical marginalization. This requires an extended post-2015 engagement with the larger political question of education’s role in undermining, or sustaining and validating, mobile livelihoods.