Alternative Learning System (ALS) shall refer to a parallel learning system to provide

a viable alternative to the existing formal education. It encompasses both the non-
formal and informal sources of knowledge and skills.

Basic Education – is the education intended to meet basic learning needs which lays
the foundation on which subsequent learning can be based. It encompasses early
childhood, elementary and high school education as well as alternative learning
systems for out-of-school youth and adult learners and includes education for those
with special needs;

Formal Education – is the systematic and deliberate process of hierarchically

structured and sequential learning corresponding to the general concept of
elementary and secondary level of schooling. At the end of each level, the learner
needs a certification in order to enter or advance to the next level;

Informal Education – is a lifelong process of learning by which every person acquires

and accumulates knowledge, skills, attitudes and insights from daily experiences at
home, at work, at play and from life itself;

(j) Non-Formal Education – is any organized, systematic educational activity carried

outside the framework of the formal system to provide selected types of learning to a
segment of the population;

(k) Quality Education – is the appropriateness, relevance and excellence of the

education given to meet the needs and aspirations of an individual and society;
Alternative education, also known as non-traditional education or educational
alternative, describes a number of approaches to teaching and learning other than
traditional publicly- or privately-run schools. These approaches can be applied to all
students of all ages, from infancy to adulthood, and all levels of education.

Educational alternatives are often the result of education reform and are rooted in
various philosophies that are fundamentally different from those of mainstream
compulsory education. While some have strong political, scholarly, or philosophical
orientations, others are more informal associations of teachers and students
dissatisfied with certain aspects of mainstream education.

Educational alternatives, which include charter schools, alternative schools,

independent schools, and home-based learning vary widely, but emphasize the
value of small class size, close relationships between students and teachers, and a
sense of community.

For some, especially in the United States, the term alternative refers to educational
settings geared towards students whose needs cannot be met in the traditional
school such as underachievers who do not qualify for special education, rather than
educational alternatives for all students. Other words used in place of alternative by
many educational professionals include non-traditional, non-conventional, or non-
standardized, although these terms are used somewhat less frequently and
sometimes have negative connotations as well as multiple meanings. Within the field
of educational alternatives, words such as authentic, holistic, and progressive are
frequently used as well, however, these words each have different meanings which
are more specific or more ambiguous than simply alternative.

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Overview

Over the 200-year course of compulsory education, various widely-scattered groups

of critics have suggested that the education of young people should involve much
more than simply molding them into future workers or citizens. The Swiss
humanitarian Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, the American transcendentalists Amos
Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, the founders of
progressive education John Dewey and Francis Parker, and educational pioneers
such as Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner (founder of the Waldorf schools),
among others, all insisted that education should be understood as the art of
cultivating the moral, emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of the
developing child.

More recently, social critics such as John Caldwell Holt, Paul Goodman, Frederick
Mayer and Ivan Illich have examined education from more individualist, anarchist,
and libertarian perspectives, that is, critiques of the ways that they feel conventional
education subverts democracy by molding young people's understandings. Other
writers, from the revolutionary Paulo Freire to American educators like Herbert Kohl
and Jonathan Kozol, have criticized mainstream Western education from the
viewpoint of their varied left-liberal and radical politics.
In the indian context one can see from the early part of the 20th century itself many
thinkers have talked and introduced radically different ways of education. For
example, Shantiniketan of Rabindranath Tagore, the ideal of basic school by
Mahatma Gandhi etc are primary examples. Any one interested in alternative
initiatives in India also may read articles in the following link In recent years, some of
the major initiatives are schools like sarang, sita school, Kanavu, timbaktoo
collective, etc where formal schooling is not the objective. Similarly even at higher
levels of education one does find initiatives like multiversity.com that have built upon
the ideal of open knowledge. in the last few decades something that has coupled
education is environment. In such a situation, education is seen more holistically
than just factory schooling system.

Another quality that distinguishes educational alternatives from their traditional

counterparts is their diversity. Unlike traditional privately run and publicly run schools
which are remarkably similar in many aspects to one another, most alternatives do
not subscribe to a "one model fits all" approach. Each educational alternative
attempts to create and maintain its own methods and approaches to learning and
teaching. Practitioners aspire to realize that there are many ways of conceiving and
understanding the needs of the whole child in balance with the needs of the
community and society at large. Thus, each alternative approach is founded upon,
sometimes drastically, different beliefs about what it means to live, learn, and grow in
today's society.

One aspect that distinguishes educational alternatives from each other is the
curricula taught within their respective settings. Across these alternatives, we find
that traditional subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics are not always
taught separately but integrated into the overall learning experience. Other subjects
like environmental education, ecology, or spirituality, which are often not found in
more traditional school curricula, emerge from the interests of learners and teachers
in a more open-ended learning community. For the most part, however, subject
matter is only indirectly related to the root philosophies and educational approaches
utilized in many alternative education systems. Often alternative approaches to
education will vary considerably within a single type of alternative from one cultural
or geographic setting to another.