Education for Sustainable Development in Mongolia

Education is the basic instrument for promoting sustainable development and its associated culture and values, and for supporting citizens in mastering the methods and experience. Education serves to disseminate new information through which it helps in obtaining of new experience and skills through its impact on mentality and motivation; therefore it is indispensable in disseminating new values and cultural approaches in society. Improving the inclusiveness and quality of basic education; disseminating the concept and principles of sustainable development in the sector, and helping people to use skills concretely in their lives are of great importance. Basic education must help individuals to share what they have learned with others, to relate to others in a tolerant manner, to learn life skills and to build their own future, to become citizens of the world possessing a global education. Thus, it is necessary to improve the quality of education at all level and in this regard, it is important to develop and implement systematic plans at the national and local levels. Mongolia made a transition to the 11-year education system beginning the academic year 2004-2005 and to the 12-year schooling system from 2008-2009 accordingly. In this area, the raising of educational standards and the reflection of Education for Sustainable Development in programs and standards are important objectives.Studying the curriculum, lesson plans and standards of educational institutions and revising these to include content on sustainable development has become pressing issue today. The Government of Mongolia has devoted its attention to introducing the concepts and values of sustainable development into the school curricula at all levels; to consider systematically of interconnection of natural science and social studies courses; and alongside the provision of facts and information to children, to develop skills and experience that meet the needs of sustainable development. In addition, it is necessary to provide education on preventing negative phenomena and events that threaten the sustainability of society and global life, along with understanding of the basic nature, developing public understanding and awareness of sustainability. The Government of Mongolia has adopted the Education Sector Master Plan in August 2006 which identifies the long-term strategic policy objectives to be pursued in the period until 2015 in regard to development of education and presents the strategies and ways to achieve them. One of the priority objectives of the Master Plan is to renew educational standards and curricula at all levels and renew standards, policy, strategies and regulations systematically to be pursued in order to ensure demands and needs to reveal and develop talents, to learn continuously responsibility and ethics of living independently in society, to work, live quality life and make choices. Within the objective, the concepts, methods and management such as “Children friendly school”, Health supporting school”, “Green school” and “Open school” are being introduced.Since 2004, in support of government policy, WWF Mongolia is engaged in several projects where environmental education is in focus. In 2004, the environmental education was seen as an entry point to promoting the Education for Sustainable Development as supported by the UN Decade for ESD. WWF Mongolia, the pioneer in introducing the concept of ESD in the country, works toward supporting pilot schools at grassroots level in ASER and AHEC Mongolia parts. The pilot schools have been established as a network of schools to practice ESD in very concrete terms and adapting the ESD visions to a local and whole school context. The whole school context requires engagement of all school staff and processes including the linkage between the schools and the surrounding society. Schools acquired knowledge and skills to develop models for local curricula, conduct ESD in their schools based upon local needs and local conditions. The methodology is to bring in the three central perspectives of sustainable development, from the ecological, economical and social aspects and to make teachers work in teams. By building the cases upon the national standards, the Case methodology becomes an effective instrument for curriculum implementation. WWF Mongolia receives substantial support from the provincial Education Departments and the school principles are fairly committed to support the pilot school initiatives. The role of the Education Departments and their methodologists is crucial when it comes to reach out and support to in- service training of teachers.Transfer of global ideas and philosophies to local level is a challenge. The approach used to embed the training in issues and processes identified by the target groups themselves has proven highly effective. All teachers at pilot schools are making own priorities for ESD developing and testing whole school ESD models (including cases, methods, and materials). The learning by doing has shown to be an effective way of making progress.Furthermore, sustainable livelihood concept is promoted through pilot schools. For linking up rural development and education, specially designed training on business entrepreneurship is introduced. Practical exercises are conducted in group works for developing business entrepreneurship project by participants.