Lifelong learning was to be the вЂmaster conceptвЂ™ that should shape educational systems (UNESCO 1972:182). (Fordham 1993: 2)ДЄt around the same time there were moves in UNESCO toward lifelong education and notions of вЂthe learning societyвЂ™ which culminated in Learning to Be (вЂThe Faure ReportвЂ™, UNESCO 1972). The conclusion was that formal educational systems had adapted too slowly to the socio-economic changes around them and that they were held back not only by their own conservatism, but also by the inertia of societies themselvesвЂ¦ It was from this point of departure that planners and economists in the World Bank began to make a distinction between informal, non-formal and formal education. Many countries were finding it difficult (politically or economically) to pay for the expansion of formal education. There was concern about unsuitable curricula a realization that educational growth and economic growth were not necessarily in step, and that jobs did not emerge directly as a result of educational inputs. Back in the late 1960s there was an emerging analysis of what was seen as a вЂworld educational crisisвЂ™ (Coombs 1968). The most common way of contrasting informal and formal education derives from an administrative or institutional concern and includes a middle form вЂ“ non-formal education. Looking to institutions: informal, non-formal and formal education Each of these has something to say about the nature of formal education вЂ“ and bring out different aspects of the phenomenon. If we examine the literature around informal education that has appeared in the last thirty years or so, three main traditions or approaches emerge.

a question of style: informality and formality.turning to process: conversation and setting.looking to institutions: informal, non-formal and formal education.Here we explore three different approaches commonly found in the literature. Many of the debates around informal and formal education have been muddied by participants having very different understandings of basic notions.

Example of non formal education