Addressing the challenges of integrating refugees in national education systems requires shifts in financing and policies. National policies in Jordan, Colombia, Chad, Burundi, Zambia, Ethiopia, and Türkiye (countries participating in the conference) have significantly improved refugees’ access to education, but many challenges in implementation remain, with financing being a perpetual constraint. Countries welcome guidance and technical expertise from development partner organizations in this area.
Towards long-term, predictable financing
Delivering quality education services to host country and refugee children requires long-term vision, underpinned by predictable investments. Conversely, the cost of not investing in children and youth can be high and long-lasting. The host countries, facing significant resource constraints, require multi-year predictable financing during transitions into education systems on par with nationals, with refugee households unable to cover costs that typically fall on families.
However, with external assistance staying flat (at about $12 billion annually) even when refugee numbers have doubled in the last decade, contingency plans are urgently needed to sustain the already implemented educational initiatives and to respond to the increasing numbers. This includes reimagining financing for refugee education, exploring innovative financing solutions, more efficient use of available funds, and new partnerships, including with philanthropic partners, the private sector, and civil society. Solutions can be found at different levels such as:
- Using available money more efficiently. Programs such as INSPIRE work to leverage funding from IDA’s Window for Host Communities and Refugees, the Global Concessional Financing Facility, the Global Partnership for Education, Education Cannot Wait and private foundations and can be used as ways to better align systems. Governments often use national IDA allocations to serve their own citizenry. IDA’s Window for Host Communities and Refugees complements that financing to implement activities that benefit refugees as well as host communities. This also serves to facilitate a dialogue between Ministries of Education and Finance as well as Refugee Agencies bringing refugee education into the education sector.
- Transitioning from parallel to host country systems. Working on governance approaches which transition previously parallel schools to receive country-level financing from the international community to help provide the necessary resources.
- Debt for education Swaps. Debt relief has been raised as a potential solution with the money that many countries have to use to pay their debts being instead used towards integrating refugee students in the national systems.
- Partnerships. Colombia offered an example of a country level solution with a partnership between government and the non-profit sector enabling refugee children to go to school. The Colombian government has made education free for all and NGOs are supporting refugee families who may need additional assistance outside the formal school system, such as with uniforms.
Towards comprehensive, inclusive policies
The cost of hosting refugees is a function of refugee-hosting policies. Many host countries have implemented impressive national policies that have improved refugees’ access to education:
- Jordan implemented inclusive policies for Syrian refugees to enrol in national schools regardless of legal status with more than 150,000 students enrolled in the public education system in 2024 (gross enrolment reported by government of Jordan).
- There were 587,000 Venezuelan children in the Colombian education system in 2023 (UNICEF), all of whom have been given the same rights to education and related services as the Colombian children. They represented more than 6% of total enrolment of children in Colombia, and the numbers are going up. In 2024 the enrolment rates for students from Venezuela were 10% in the municipality of Bogota and 18% in Barranquilla.
- In 2024, Ethiopia had close to 1 million refugees with around 173,000 students enrolled in 17,000 education institutions (2023 UNHCR Refugee Data Finder). Six secondary schools for refugees have been transferred into the national education system and the remaining five will have transitioned by the end of 2025.
- Burundi is hosting about 87,000 refugees in 2024 (UNHCR), primarily from the Democratic Republic of Congo and has been giving the refugee students an alternative to follow the Congolese education system. Since 2021 access to basic education for all has been made into law (waiting for ministerial agreement) and the country is getting ready to remove the alternative track.
- In Zambia, all 27 schools in refugee-hosting areas (hosting both refugee and Zambian students) receive the same support from teachers, learning materials, school health and nutrition to sanitary pads for girls of age.
- In Chad, 115 schools located in refugee hosting areas (villages and camps) were turned into official public schools in 2018. Those schools are now in the national database. Following the Sudan emergency, 26 primary and secondary schools have been created in newly created camps, as well as camps that have been extended to host new arrivals. UNHCR is working in collaboration with the Ministry of Education to give public school status to those new schools in 2025. (UNHCR)
Integrating students from the beginning and recognizing their prior education is more cost-effective than creating temporary solutions. Migration and social policies that allow for freedom of movement and enable refugees to contribute to society ensure a sustainable and mutually beneficial integration process, reducing the costs of negative consequences of exclusion.
Towards recognition of past education
Administrative hurdles such as registration and lack of documentation are solvable with political will and a coordinated approach between ministries of education and line ministries charged with refugee management.
- To address accreditation, Colombia scrapped requirements for documentation of past learning outcomes for refugee children and implemented placement tests instead.
- Countries like Zambia acknowledge that many of the refugees arriving have strong educational backgrounds and are working to come up with more flexible education pathways and certifications for those who already have qualifications.
- Another possible solution is for the global actors to map the curriculum of countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that produce large numbers of refugees to several countries. Such verified mapping would help host countries identify faster where the arriving refugee children are in their learning trajectory.
Towards inclusion of refugee teachers
Allowing teachers who are refugees themselves, to work in host country schools brings several benefits. First, they have the needed language skills, cultural understanding and shared experience of displacement with the students to effectively reach them with learning interventions. They may also be able to detect students’ needs for mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS). Second, they can be a solution to local teacher shortages though this will depend on the right to work, recognition of prior qualification and equivalency or accreditation within the host country, and the political economy of teacher unions. Third, giving refugee teachers the opportunity to be a productive part of the solution has benefits for their families, and the refugee communities. However, in many countries refugee teachers are not allowed to teach or may be allowed to act as learning assistants but cannot be integrated into the national system. For example, Jordan restricts foreign teachers due to high numbers of unemployed national teachers. Conversely, Chad and Ethiopia have made efforts to integrate refugee teachers into their education systems.
Towards inclusive migration, social and labour policies
Refugee children and their families hope that national education will provide them with social, civic, and economic opportunities. Migration, social, labour, and other policies can reinforce inclusive education policies. For example, with children in schools, parents are freed up from care responsibilities to contribute to the economy if labour policies allow, which could benefit the host country including through tax revenue and skilled labour. Undermining the labour market possibilities for refugees serves to disincentivize further education, and can lead to despair, marginalization, and potential radicalization.
Cross sectoral collaboration is needed to ensure that education prepares the youth for the needs and requirements of the labour market. Allowing refugees to develop and use their skills will be to the benefit of host country economies and, eventually, countries of origin. This has broad positive implications for integration efforts. For example, granting temporary right to work for refugees in Colombia had a major impact on the perception of refugees in terms of their ability to contribute to their new communities and also to the take up of education.