The 2019 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, entitled ‘Building bridges, not walls’, analyses policies towards refugees and migrants around the world. It praises countries in Western Asia, such as Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, where almost a third of the world’s refugees are hosted, for their inclusive education policies towards Syrian refugees. The Islamic Republic of Iran has also decreed that schools should accept all Afghan children regardless of documentation. The Report calls for such efforts to be intensified and for international support to help the countries reach their ambitions for fully inclusive education. This means including children at all education levels and from all nationalities.
Manos Antoninis, Director of the GEM Report said: “At last, exclusionary practices are being abandoned, whether due to political pragmatism or international solidarity. While double-shift systems have been an important temporary fix, the long-term consequence of being permanently segregated is that refugees cannot integrate into the host society and they are put at a learning disadvantage. Better international support is needed to help these countries make the leap to fully inclusive refugee education.”
Globally, only a third of the funding gap for refugee education has been filled. UNRWA, providing education to half a million Palestinian refugees, faces a major finance gap after the withdrawal of the United States, its largest donor in absolute terms. The regional response to the Syrian crisis had received only $248 million of the requested $873 million for education, or 28%, by April 2018.
The quality of education will suffer without greater international support to the countries hosting most Syrian refugees. Teachers’ salaries are the most expensive part of any education bill and Turkey needs 80,000 teachers to teach all current refugees. In Lebanon, only 55% of teachers and staff had participated in professional development in the previous two years.
The Report shows that, if the international community used only humanitarian aid, the share to education would need to increase ten times to meet refugees’ needs. The Education Cannot Wait Fund, established in 2016 is highlighted as key for raising resources for education in emergencies that can bring humanitarian and development actors to work together. Donors are called to use the momentum behind the Fund’s creation to catalyse predictable, multi-year funding.
Education for those on the move is crucial: the Report cautions of the links between education and violent extremism, warning that exclusion from education’s benefits can be as harmful as exclusion from education itself. A study in eight Arab countries showed that unemployment increased the probability of radicalization only among the more educated. Disappointed expectations of improving economic standing through education increased the allure of violent extremism to address grievances.
The Report has concrete recommendations for countries to fulfil their education commitments to migrants and refugees.
- Protect the right to education of migrants and displaced people
- Include migrants and displaced people in the national education system
- Understand and plan for the education needs of migrants and displaced people
- Represent migration and displacement histories in education accurately to challenge prejudices
- Prepare teachers of migrants and refugees to address diversity and hardship.
- Harness the potential of migrants and displaced people
Support education needs of migrants and displaced people in humanitarian and development aid.
