The integration of refugee students into national education systems requires targeted interventions and system level changes. Effective integration aims at smoothing the on-ramps for individual students into the systems. Entry points for facilitating these transitions include supporting teachers to provide quality education, meeting students where they are, ensuring quality learning conditions, and fostering safe school environments.
Towards consistent teacher support
Teachers are key to integrating refugee students, often finding innovative solutions to help their students even in challenging circumstances. A consistent focus on their wellbeing is essential, as they handle larger, diverse classes that include displaced children. Countries should ensure teachers are well-paid, trained, recognized, and supported, including professional development and mental health support. The relationship between the teacher and the students plays a major role in the successful integration of refugee students and the focus of teacher approaches should be on building trust and kindness. Teachers are also often the first ones to recognize potential mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) needs in their students and should receive relevant training to be able to support and refer them. Many refugee-hosting countries make extensive efforts to recruit and train additional teachers, sometimes offering incentives for those working in refugee schools. It is also important to note that in many L/LMICs there are already significant teacher shortages, and challenges in recruiting, retaining and paying adequate numbers of teachers. This is a critical area where solutions which include refugees can leverage support to improve the education system for all.
Balancing standardization and autonomy
Finding balance between standardization and autonomy is required to serve the diverse populations of refugees while respecting the overarching standards for all. For example, teachers in Jordan adapt national curricula to address the specific concerns of Syrian students. In Burundi, the government has allowed refugee students to be taught following their origin country’s curriculum, but this has led to issues with monitoring and managing a system based on a curriculum that is not aligned with the host country’s education system. Consequently, foreign teachers are being trained in the national curriculum to get certified.
Towards teaching at the level of the students (including language acquisition)
For integration to work, children and young people need to be placed in appropriate educational settings that match their current level of knowledge and skills. Offering catch-up or remedial classes is essential for those who have missed school or come from different educational systems. For example, in Jordan, catch-up programs are available to both refugee and national students who have fallen behind. Host countries should ensure that schooling can continue regardless of how many years a person has missed. Recognizing prior qualifications or certificates when placing students, especially at the secondary level, is also vital to help students transition smoothly into the new education system.
Learning the host country’s language is crucial. In countries like Colombia, shared language has improved social cohesion and access to services for refugees from Venezuela, as well as their educational journey. However, language remains a major barrier in many countries. For example, Chad uses two languages, one of which most refugees do not speak, and in Zambia, the refugees from DRC do not understand the language of instruction. When consulted, refugee children themselves prioritize the need for early language support, classrooms that facilitate engagement while learning the language, and ongoing improvement support. Providing timely language assistance, such as accelerated language acquisition programs, can significantly improve integration efforts in the medium and long term.
Towards ensuring physical and emotional safety
Consultations with refugee youth reveal that safety from school-related violence, both on the way to and within schools, is one of their main concerns. Ensuring safety for all students is a priority and addressing identity-based inequalities, xenophobia, and stigma is essential for fostering inclusive environments. Engaging refugee families in school life, as seen in Colombia, helps build social cohesion and mutual support. With teachers sometimes being among the perpetrators of school-related violence (e.g. through corporal punishment and sexual harassment), creating professional codes of conduct and ethics can help establish a common foundation. At the same time, it is important to note that teachers themselves are often victims of violence.
Overcrowded schools compromise the quality of education and pose sanitary and safety risks. Additionally, long distances to public schools from refugee settlements often expose students to significant dangers. In the short term, some countries address this issue by providing transportation for students to attend schools and take exams, or by setting up exam centers near refugee camps. However, for a sustainable solution, more and better schools need to be constructed closer to where the students are. For example, Burundi would need support with building infrastructure to have bigger classrooms that can host all students, from refugees and host communities.
Towards data informed decision-making
Enhancing data collection, analysis, and use is vital for informed decision-making. Adjusting national enrolment systems to reflect school-specific, student-level data that captures the nationality of students, as is done in Colombia through the Education Management Information System (EMIS), helps allocate support effectively. Understanding the diverse needs of refugee and host populations ensures that the most vulnerable are not left behind. This should be done with a “protection lens”, making sure that identifying and locating non-citizens does not pose a security risk to them.
Towards ensuring support for all, not just refugees
It is important to consider the broader societal impact of these initiatives, such as providing transportation for refugee students while local students lack similar support, which can create issues around social cohesion. To avoid emerging narratives of unequal support, providing continued support for refugees in host countries should be done without neglecting other parts of society.
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Considerations for underserved populations
Many challenges that refugee children face are the same as those experienced by marginalized host communities. System level approaches to provide inclusive, quality education to young people, girls and boys, and children with disabilities are already being rolled out by governments. Considering how to expand these approaches to refugees, including those with additional vulnerabilities, means a focus on strengthening inclusive systems which benefit all children and their families and have a potential to create big impacts with small shifts.
Out-of-school youth
Many young people are not in school due to limited educational opportunities. Traditional school settings may not be suitable for all, rather requiring tailored approaches to meet their educational needs. Especially refugee out-of-school youth are often not reached by the current options: secondary, vocational, and accelerated education. Existing programs are supply-oriented, benefiting easier-to-reach children and youth, while those out-of-school, a diverse group including orphans, young mothers, youth engaged in at-risk behaviors and heads of households, remain underserved, as do adults that are also in need of second chances. Gender investments focus on younger girls, neglecting older female youth, and boys.
To choose the right approach, both the target beneficiaries and their needs must be well understood. Many young refugees have significant responsibilities, such as being heads of households, due to losing family support and income and having to care for others. This creates specific needs regarding the time, location, flexibility, duration, content, and community aspects of education. Additionally, groups such as ex-combatants, young mothers, and orphans have unique needs and experiences, and it is important to understand their specific vulnerabilities and how these impact access and retention.
Co-creating with youth is essential to design innovative, contextually adapted programs that are relevant and empowering, and will lead to anticipated outcomes. Several practices can be effective including exploring stronger integration of economic empowerment opportunities into education, providing life skills or soft skills training alongside more traditional curricula, providing mentorship or income opportunities, offering flexible study schedules for working youth, arranging for childcare for young mothers and offering unconditional cash transfers to students. Improving community safety nets is also essential, though it may cause tensions over who is accepted and supported. Digital education, such as mobile learning, offers a promising, cost-effective way to reach a larger number of youth with non-traditional pathways.
Early child development and education
Early childhood development (ECD) in crisis contexts is significantly overlooked and underfunded, despite children representing over 40% of forcibly displaced people and the early years being crucial for brain development. ECD interventions also yield significant economic returns and foster relationships between displaced populations and host communities. Having ECD policies is essential for setting clear directions and focusing on all children, including refugees. As countries are expanding opportunities for ECD, this is an opportune time to include refugees, mainstream opportunities, and fund governments directly to support the policy development process, since much of the service delivery is still pending or outside the national education system, for both host and refugee children. It is suggested that donor governments should allocate at least 10% of humanitarian funding to support local, national, and community organizations providing ECD services.
As with out-of-school youth, participatory policymaking with civil society, including refugees, should inform policy. Interventions, such as pre-primary spaces in primary schools and trauma-informed ECD training are creative, multi-sectoral ways to approach the challenge. Financing should be increased and made more creative, supporting both formal and informal community-based ECD initiatives. Collaboration among various ministries, civil society, and the private sector can create inclusive and effective ECD policies and programs.
Gender
Many gender-based challenges faced by refugee students are similar to those of host communities, but refugees often encounter additional difficulties related to systems, safety, classroom environment, and teaching approaches. Unlike national averages, there is still an average gender gap in access to education for refugees in countries that report gender disaggregated data. From lack of access to menstrual products and sanitation to trauma from sexual violence in conflict, adolescent girls in emergencies regularly face specific obstacles that stop them from learning, and governments’ responses must be tailored accordingly.
Understanding the host and refugee population’s cultural norms and their differences must be considered to effectively address marginalization. As an example, cultures have different beliefs around segregation of girls and boys and around menstruation. In many cultures, re-enrolment of pregnant girls and young mothers is hindered by stigma. Understanding these types of dynamics helps in developing effective support strategies.
Data-driven approaches help identify and address specific issues, ensuring that educational initiatives are contextually adapted and equitable. Teacher training systems should incorporate gender and cultural understanding lenses. Offering courses to refugee mothers has also been found useful in helping them become active community participants and encouraging their children’s education. Much also needs to happen around ensuring a safe learning environment for all and ending violence in and through schools, including addressing the different impacts of violence on girls and boys. The availability of female or male teachers may impact student attendance and performance, though data on this is inconclusive.
Children with disabilities
Capacity gaps in teachers and schools and lack of appropriate tools limit the ability to provide disability-inclusive education. This is further complicated by data gaps in Education Management Information Systems (EMIS) that hinder effective allocation and planning of resources. These issues are not different from those faced by host country children with disabilities but can be exacerbated for refugee children with disabilities. Conflicts often also cause more children to have disabilities.
Effective strategies to address the challenges include the twin-track approach, combining mainstreaming and targeted interventions, and meeting countries where they are. This needs to be combined with raising community awareness to combat stigma and to understand that making schools inclusive to students with disabilities benefits all.
Localization and involving Organizations of Persons with Disabilities (OPDs) ensure context-specific solutions that meet the needs of refugee students with different disabilities. Disabilities vary enormously and teachers should be trained and encouraged to recognise specific needs and prioritise inclusion. Tools for screening and diagnostics, and data-driven resource allocation enhance support.
Balancing parallel systems and diverse needs can create tensions, so adopting a “do no harm” approach and making context-specific decisions is important. Teacher training, improved school infrastructure, and family-level support are essential components of a comprehensive strategy as is creating disability inclusive and supportive environments in and out of school. Teachers and schools should be equipped to support disabilities, with investment into assistive technologies as standard rather than an option and benefitting as many students as possible. Insights from gender initiatives can help create more inclusive educational environments.