t dawn, in the high remote pastures of the Himalayas, we find the Gujjar-Bakarwals, who have arduously covered great lengths of land on foot, with their belongings and cattle, in search of better grasslands and water for their livestock. In the deserts of Cholistan, mobile families keep moving along water paths for their survival. In the urban slums of Lahore, members of the Pakhiwas community pick trash. All three live through unimaginably harsh conditions. They fall under no classification in the census data and appear only in the records of some civil society organisations working on their health or education.

Education, in our conventional understanding of it, is the learning and teaching that takes place in a protected building or a classroom, with a teacher carrying chalk in one hand and a textbook in the other. Some wonder whether it is at all a possibility for nomads—whether investing in the idea is beneficial, when they are adamant to stick to their cultural identity and preserve their mobile lifestyles.

This is a consequence of a lack of understanding.

We have to imagine an education from which no one is excluded. On ground, this idea seems defeated when we look at data of out-of-school children and stagnant improvement in learning poverty.

There is not enough acknowledgement of an estimated 1.5 to 2 million people or more, who live in these mobile communities without acknowledged rights. There is not only a lack of acknowledgement but also official recognition. Where they have been documented at all, it has been on the basis of ethno-linguistic identity or for administrative reasons. The last census taken comprehensively on the presence of tribes and communities was in 1931, under British rule, when all tribes and castes were identified and documented. Where they have recognition, they remain discriminated through social behaviours: their way of life is subject to stereotyping and stigma, making it hard to assign value to their contributions.

Nomad populations come with unique dynamics that are not fully understood outside their historical, cultural and geographical context. Nomadic or peripatetic groups differ by type, as their mobility is organised around their trade and the itinerant services they provide. Their ways—lifestyles and indigenous traditions of learning—carry rich lessons, not in the manner of their occupational trade but in the oral folklores and histories shared in their languages, providing important clues to where they came from and how they developed.

Once, they ruled while maintaining a nomadic lifestyle. Today, they have evolved into pastoralist or semi-pastoralist and artisan communities on the move, carrying generations of traditions, aiming to preserve what they can while facing challenges that threaten their existence.

They remain mostly hidden, forgotten and neglected. Little has been done to understand their dynamics or to grant them the opportunities they seek. This includes opening schools for them.

The lessons of some initiatives need to be recognised.

The first is the establishment of schools for the Rohis or Cholistani communities, the nomadic camel herders who shift places in search of water in the tobas (water-holding mud ponds) and the alluvial lands of the desert, from where they seasonally migrate. Some schools were set up in 1996 with help from the Cholistan Development Authority and the Literacy Programme. By 2011, sustainability appeared to be a problem. Governments lost interest in maintaining the infrastructure and it was handed over to the Punjab Education Foundation. The focus remains on sedentarisation and formal education. With traditional ways of life dying out fast, this approach seems logical. But with this strategy comes the danger of losing the important indigenous lessons of their generational transfer of knowledge.

An important system of schooling is run by a civil society organisation in the slums of Lahore. It caters to children from the Pakhiwas community. The system runs on the premise that education needs to run on the terms of the community and not the other way round. There is some flexibility in terms of requiring uniforms and punctuality.

Improvised lessons in the mother tongue are delivered by trained volunteer teachers. The idea of differentiated learning, if not announced as such, was introduced as a natural consequence of teachers coming with innovative ideas. The system is appealing to the community. Mothers were later made part of the learning process, which indirectly helped them with basic literacy skills, demonstrating how unconventional ways of learning can benefit the community.

A non-formal way of learning, improvised and centred on Punjabi, the transactional lingua franca of the children, proved helpful. Yet, as strong as it was, the idea failed to build mass appeal or attract the consideration of school education policymakers.

Another effort was an education system devised by the Bakarwal nomads, with their story of mobile schools going back to 1997. What is unique about these schools is that they began by preparing primers in Gojri language, with the thought that learning and understanding primarily in the mother tongue will help children pick up faster. The primers are also mindful of using text and pictures that are relatable to the community. Teacher recruitment from within the community has remained a challenge. This model deserves attention on account of its potential to transfer traditional knowledge along with modern skills. It can at least prepare the learners to be schooled in modern skills while adapting their traditional knowledge for better livestock rearing and herding. To be sustainable, the programme will require state support.

The state is bound by the treaties it has ratified, including the CRC, the ICESCR, the ICCPR, the CEDAW and the ILO Convention No 107 (on the Protection and Integration of Indigenous and Other Tribal and Semi-Tribal Populations in Independent Countries). ILO Convention 107 is particularly important in that it speaks of education programmes adapted to social, cultural and economic conditions; of instruction to be carried out in the mother tongue; of respect for traditional knowledge, customs and cultural values within educational programmes; and of ensuring equal access to education while accommodating distinctive ways of life.

The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and, more recently, the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 76/253, acknowledge pastoralists and mobile communities as indispensable contributors to biodiversity conservation, food security, climate resilience and sustainable development.

The objective of education is not to require nomadic communities to conform to sedentary systems but to encourage adaptive educational facilities to mirror the uniqueness of mobile people. This means that the education system be designed around their social organisation, seasonal mobility, cultural practices, livelihoods, languages and indigenous systems of knowledge.

Conventional schooling, built upon assumptions of permanent residence, fixed calendars and uninterrupted attendance, may not adequately respond to the realities of mobile populations. Educational models should recognise mobility as an asset rather than a barrier, allowing children to be able to gain the most out of the knowledge they seek.

The writer is an education rights advocate based in Islamabad. She can be reached at [email protected].