Boarding schools in transition: A post-socialist analysis of “relevance” as an education policy problem in Mongolia

Abstract

The rural boarding schools that were established in the socialist era to serve children in Mongolia’s herding communities remain integral to national policy for ensuring universal access to formal education. Education policy actors demonstrate commitment to the socialist legacy of the schooled herder child, while at the same posing legitimate questions as to boarding schools’ quality and contemporary relevance. This questioning is framed with reference to a globally-orientated discourse of standards, outcomes measurement and skills for employability. The paper argues from a post-socialist perspective that this orientation forecloses a nuanced, contextualised understanding of “relevance” as a complex educational policy problem. Drawing on policy documents and secondary literature, it develops and applies a post-socialist conceptual framework to explore the temporal and spatial orientations of rural boarding schools and their “relevance”. The analysis evidences multiple, intersecting layers of change which situate the schooled herder child and constitute Mongolia”s “unfinished business of socialism” in education. The paper concludes that the layering revealed in this analysis needs to be more visible to educational policy; and that to resist oversimplifying the complex problem of education”s relevance is an ontological imperative.

What will the future bring? – Socio-economic challenges to herder households in the Dzungarian Gobi, Mongolia

“…Nomadic pastoralism has been practiced over millennia, especially in arid regions unsuitable for other agricultural production (Godde et al, 2020). However, changes in socioeconomic conditions result in shifts from nomadic to sessile forms of livestock grazing and increased rural-urban migration, trends which can be observed in many rangeland systems globally (Dyer et al, 2022;Wafula et al, 2022). In addition, climatic extremes are challenging this traditional lifestyle particularly in the most arid rangelands (Fernández-Giménez et al, 2017).…”

“…Over more than 60 years, all herder households were part of livestock collectives and herded state-owned animals for a salary (Fernández-Giménez, 1999). With the end of the soviet-collective era many people returned to herding at the family level (Dyer et al, 2022;Fernández-Giménez et al, 2017;Meurs et al, 2017). Privatization and the development of an export market for cashmere wool has led to a shift from a subsistence to a market economy (Meurs et al, 2017), where herders have increased their livestock, especially the number of cashmere goats (Berger et al, 2013;Wei & Zhen, 2020).…”

“…decades(Dyer et al, 2022). Worldwide, herding as an occupation is becoming less attractive to the youth(Schlecht et al, 2020) and young Mongolians move to urban areas to seek labour or higher education (Fernández-Giménez et al, 2017; Park et al, 2017).…”