Supporting Access to Quality Education for Refugees

SUPPORTING ACCESS TO QUALITY EDUCATION FOR REFUGEES, DURING COVID-19 AND BEYOND

BY REBECCA TELFORD

Around 90% of the world’s school-age children have been affected by school closures, including an estimated seven million refugees. Refugee children were facing significant barriers to education even before the pandemic: around 50% were out of school, with enrollment reducing significantly as students get older and transition through to secondary school and beyond.

During this crisis, UNCHR has striven to maintain a strong focus on education, preventing a backslide in gains around access to quality education and maintaining the protective impact of education for the most vulnerable. Across the world, UNHCR operations have worked with partners, governments, and other stakeholders to ensure that disruptions to learning are minimized, and to guard against COVID-19 exacerbating inequalities in the long-term.

Look for opportunities to work toward inclusion. Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis, education responses are managed at the national level. Through the Global Compact on Refugees, which sets out an approach to support governments hosting refugees to include them into national systems, UNHCR has worked with national governments to respond to the needs of refugees in their COVID response planning.

Respond to the needs of refugee families and communities more broadly. UNHCR’s mandate is first and foremost around protection, and immediate activities focused on community mobilization and dissemination of accurate and localized information. In addition, UNHCR mobilized a wide-range of efforts around mitigating the negative socio-economic impacts of the crisis on families and communities, including efforts to ensure the continuity of support services such as food that would have otherwise been provided to children at schools.

Recognize how the pandemic is increasing inequality. As with national governments and many other actors, UNHCR has supported digital remote learning opportunities during this time. This includes creating wrap-around services to host government responses, such as local language versions or additional content, which is more familiar to refugees. However, many of the online and distance learning solutions are not accessible to refugee communities, especially those in remote locations who may not have the hardware, power, or connectivity needed to access these and risk falling further behind.

Rolling out simple, effective solutions—fast. Using radio to broadcast lessons from teachers, activities and stories for whole families to share, and health messaging about how to prevent COVID-19 is a proven low-cost way to continue supporting refugee families with accurate information and materials. That said, many refugees (and some camps) need additional support to access radio sets, boost FM signals, and create familiar content in local languages or formats.

Protect the education workforce. Continuing to pay teacher salaries where these are not covered under government systems is an investment now to keep children learning where possible, and to safeguard a smooth return to school as quickly as possible. Investing in teacher training and support aims to prepare them to cope with the additional responsibilities and new approaches.

Continue to focus on getting back to school. Even with significant investment, the extent to which learning can continue at the same pace as school will be limited, especially for marginalized populations. Whilst school reopening depends on national policies and the ability to follow health-related protocols, preparing for a return to school with additional support for the most vulnerable children is crucial. From accelerated and remedial classes or clubs, to using classroom technology to catch up children on specific skills, there are a range of options.

Protect girls and work toward equity. Experience from school closures in response to other disease outbreaks has shown that the most vulnerable children are at the greatest risk of not returning to school, and that adolescent girls are often most affected. The Malala Fund’s report “Girls, Education and COVID-19” estimates that, if dropouts follow the same rates as post-Ebola, around 10 million more secondary school-aged girls could be out of school after the crisis has passed. For refugee girls, whom were already half as likely as their male peers, it could take generations to catch up.

With these approaches, COVID-19 may offer an opportunity to reimagine education systems. For UNHCR this means a situation where refugee children can contribute to the future, for the good of all. The pandemic has seen the value of education and dignity—from policy shifts across European countries, which fasttracked recognition of refugees’ medical qualifications to nurses who came to Kenya as refugees and were supported to complete their tertiary education. As the High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi noted, “Refugees…are ready to step in and contribute, if allowed. In this way, they can show their solidarity, and give back to the communities sheltering them.” Such future contribution will only be possible if we can seize this moment and guard against the exacerbation of existing inequalities.

About the author: Education Section. Dr. Rebecca Telford is Chief of UNHCR’s