Mongolia
Partner
Batjargal Batkhuyag
Batjargal Batkhuyag works as an executive director of the Mongolian Education Alliance (MEA), one of the leading NGOs in Mongolia dedicated to improving the quality of education for all children and promoting youth participation. He serves as a Board member of the Network of Education Policy Centers and is a founding member and a board member of the “All for Education” Mongolian National Civil Society Coalition. He was previously Lecturer at Mongolia’s University of the Humanities and his interests lie in promoting and advocating for access, equity and quality education for marginalised groups.
Batja sings a popular Mongolian song:
National Context
Mongolia, the least densely populated country in the world, comprises the Gobi desert, grassy steppe and mountainous regions, and is extremely dry and cold. It is mostly ethnically homogenous with majority Mongol and small percentages of Kazakh and Tuva populations. Mongolia was under Soviet leadership from 1921 until 1991, when it gained independence.
During the socialist period, education was free and widespread, and even included measures to deliver education services to the nomadic population through boarding schools. The current education system, based on the principle of equality, reflects the Education Law in the 1992 Mongolian Constitution, and consists of preschool, primary, secondary, technical/vocational, tertiary, and nonformal education sectors. Issues of concern for education in Mongolia today include quality of teaching and curriculum, inclusion challenges, and equity within and among various subgroups (nomadic, rural, urban).
Educational leadership training began in an ad hoc fashion 10-20 years ago, and is becoming more institutionalized, but is not mandatory for school principals. Updated objectives for education in Mongolia as summarized by the Global Partnership for Education in English can be found here: https://www.globalpartnership.org/where-we-work/mongolia.
Mongolian Case Study