Post-primary education

Time to deliver

Primary education is increasingly seen as a priority on the same level as ‘life saving’ activities such as ensuring good health, adequate food supply and water and sanitation facilities. Most refugee camps have primary schools and many adolescents attend these classes. After primary, however, there is a mixed pattern of refugee education.

At best, there are a few secondary schools in refugee camps, some scholarships to attend national secondary schools or integration into the national system, as was the case in Iran for many Afghan students. There may be a few vocational courses and literacy classes or more rarely accelerated learning courses for young people and adults. At worst, young refugees have no access to post-primary education: it is estimated that 7 percent of refugees in developing countries attend secondary school compared with 18 percent of national citizens.

Lack of funds is the reason usually given for the neglect of secondary or vocational education. Behind this is a policy decision about who should be educated. Basic education, which usually includes lower secondary, is now included by most countries as a requirement for their citizens. For refugees, it is even more crucial to continue post-primary schooling: their primary schooling is often weak and they are liable to lose their literacy and numeracy skills if they do not continue. Moreover, education can protect young refugees from the many dangers they have to confront.

To end this neglect, the Foundation for the Refugee Education Trust (RET) was established as an independent organisation in 2000. Mandated to facilitate international cooperation in post-primary education for displaced youth, the RET has so far helped provide funding, resources and educational tools through implementing partners in 11 conflict-affected countries. The RET has also helped develop INEE’s Minimum Standards for Education in Emergencies.

From its field experiences the RET draws the following recommendations for designing and managing programmes:

• Donors need to revise their policy orientation to include expenditure on education for displaced adolescents and young adults from the beginning of an emergency through to the finding of a lasting solution. Refugee communities and host countries often cannot contribute to this education; user fees exclude young people from poor families.
• Budgets must be flexible to allow adjustments to changing emergency conditions.
• Donor funds need to be timely to ensure cash flow so that local organisations undertaking innovative programmes for young people can survive.
• Cuts should not be made in education programmes just because a process of repatriation is envisaged or announced. Young people remaining in the host country must have access to education. Students should not be forced to give up their studies to return to areas without educational opportunities.
• Refugee education projects should provide benefits to host country schools to lessen feelings of envy and some nationals should be admitted to refugee programmes.
• Policymakers should find ways of showing respect to teachers, giving them training, cooperation, supplies and good wages.

Ann Avery and Marina López Anselme
Foundation for the Refugee Education Trust
48 Chemin du Grand Montfleury
CH-1290 Versoix,
Switzerland
T + 41 22 775 05 25/6
avery@r-e-t.com
lopez-anselme@r-e-t.com
www.r-e-t.com

See also

Time to end neglect of post-primary education, Forced Migration Review 22, by Tim Brown, January 2005
www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR22/FMR2215.pdf

Gender imbalance in secondary schools, Forced Migration Review 22, by Catherine Mugisha, January 2005
www.fmreview.org/FMRpdfs/FMR22/FMR2216.pdf

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