As many Syrian refugees in Lebanon prepare to go back to school next week, over 280,000 remain out of school. Child labour, safety concerns and capacity issues are hampering enrolment efforts, according to the Norwegian Refugee Council.
To help address this problem, the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) is working with education partners across Lebanon to increase enrolment for the 2017-18 school year. Through the national Back-to-School Campaign, NRC staff are going door-to-door and tent-to-tent in refugee settlements in an effort to enrol out-of-school children in public education programmes.
“There are far too many children not in school in Lebanon. In spite of efforts made to enrol more children, refugees still face extraordinary obstacles in accessing education,” said Kate Norton, NRC’s Lebanon Country Director.
Humanitarian agencies and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education have engaged in nation-wide outreach efforts to try and ensure that refugees have access to an education. However, almost 60% (286,000) of the estimated 488,000 Syrian children of school age in Lebanon were not enrolled in public education last school year.
Severe economic pressure and restrictions on mobility due to lack of legal residency are among the main issues that refugees face.
“As the Syria crisis drags through its seventh year, more and more families are forced to send their children to work instead of school,” said Norton.
“The Ministry of Education and Higher Education and their partners have made tremendous progress in enrolling hundreds of thousands of children in school, but in order to get the hundreds of thousands who are still out of school, parents need to be able to cover the basic needs of the family. No parent should ever have to make the terrible choice between sending their children to school or sending them to work,” Norton added.
There are also capacity issues in many schools in Lebanon, with thousands of students in places like Arsal, on the Syrian border, unable to attend school due to a lack of classroom space.
Additional issues cited by refugees for not enrolling their children in school include the cost of transportation, concerns about children crossing checkpoints, and the fact that public schools in Lebanon teach in English and French whereas most refugees speak only Arabic.
“Many children have been out of school for several years due to their displacement, and many are facing developmental and emotional issues, making integration within a foreign school system particularly difficult,” Norton explained.
In addition to enrolment in public schools, NRC also provides non-formal community-based education which serves a bridge to prepare refugee children to enter the public school system.
Original source: Norwegian Refugee Council.
Posted on 4 October 2017
