AN ECONOMIC ARGUMENT FOR NON- FORMAL EDUCATION

According to the United Nations General Secretary, "education is the fundamental right and the basis for progress in every country." (UNESCO, 2014). Indeed, education has been seen as the driver for human capital development. Formal Education has been the priority for most if not all nations. Non Formal Education (NFE) however can also present tantalizing complementarities to the Formal Education system. Non-formal education has been regarded as remedial education for people who have missed the opportunity to attend formal education in terms of training, knowledge and skills acquisition, enhancing the quality of life, reducing poverty and improving livelihood initiatives in regard to their socio-economic needs (UNESCO, 2014). Additionally, the flexibility of Non Formal Education programmes has meant that they can be tailored to job-specific requirements. As such it also used to provide in-service training programmes for those already in the job-market as well as it also used to reskill and upskill employees or provide them with refresher courses. Non Formal Education can also have utility in addressing the job-gap (Ngozwana, 2017: 114). This a phenomenon most acute in LDCs, including Lesotho, where some products of the Formal Education system including graduates find their education is a mismatch with job requirements or market-needs rendering them unemployable despite their education. As such both formal and non-formal education can be a source of supply of skill in the labour-market.