The first chapter of this report updates what we know about student and teacher wellbeing, the time spent on learning for pupils during the period of school closure and the experience of lockdown for teachers.

In the second chapter, the authors consider the status of school reopening planning around the world, alongside the measures being taken to ensure that students and teachers can return to school safely. The authors also look at emerging plans to tackle learning loss and to structure and support recovery.

Finally, the report assesses the conditions for long-term educational recovery with a focus on funding and financial support for governments in low-income contexts, where fragile and unequal learning environments had already persisted prior to Covid-19 school closures.

In particular, there is limited long-term data and evidence around learning achievements and outcomes for learners with disabilities, making it difficult to enact systemic changes to the education system that would improve learning achievements for children with disabilities (Schuelka, 2013). For most studies reviewed, data were lacking on whether outcomes differed according to gender, or whether interventions were cost-effective. The lack of data comparing different approaches that try to improve educational inclusion and outcomes for children with disabilities makes it difficult to judge what approach is most effective (Kuper et al, 2018).

DFID commissioned an independent global review of the GEC programme of which WWW was a part. This used a particularly rigorous evaluation methodology including a randomised controlled
trial comparison of the performance of the girls that we supported, with a control group of girls outside the programme. The DFID independent evaluation identified WWW as one of the most effective GEC projects in the world. Not only did many girls re-engage in education but the academic achievements of the girls in school were particularly impressive.

This report captures what might be learnt from a selection of the world’s most interesting examples of technology-assisted in-service professional development in lower-income countries and from wider reflections about the potential of technology to enhance the professional learning of teachers.

To strengthen its education in emergencies (EiE) programming, the U.K. Department of International Development (DFID) drew on the DAI-led Expert Advisory Call Down service on resilience programming to research evidence on which interventions work to support high-quality schooling for displaced children—and where the evidence falls short. DAI consortium partner Cambridge Education led the research and produced six Evidence Briefs about EiE, focusing on quality and learning; protection and inclusion; cost-effective delivery; data, monitoring, and evaluation; political settlements; and accountability.

From these briefs, the team compiled the Education in Emergencies Guidance Note. DFID encourages policy makers and development practitioners worldwide to consider this guidance and researchers to fill in the many knowledge gaps in this field. Here we share select observations from the briefs.

Protection and Inclusion—Ensuring Schools are Safe and Inclusive. The team sought evidence on how to ensure formal and informal schools are safe spaces that protect children and welcome the vulnerable, particularly girls and the disabled. Distance to school is a major barrier for young children, girls, and children with disabilities. Strategies found to make schools safer and more accessible include chaperoned walking to school (Jordan) and recruiting village and female volunteers (Afghanistan). Tackling the effects of trauma emerged as another important theme—in Gaza, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Better Learning Programme combined psychosocial and trauma-focused training for teachers and school counsellors. The programme significantly reduced nightmares for 70 percent of students and moderately reduced nightmares for 30 percent, with the improved wellbeing attributed to students’ improved enjoyment of school and increased level of effort.

Data, Monitoring, and Evaluation—Understanding Change and Challenges. There is consensus that better data is critical to understand the challenge of intervening at scale, to inform programming, monitor responses, and assess children’s access, attainment, and education pathways as their locations or circumstances change. For example, while an estimated 60 percent of the world’s 19.5 million refugees and 80 percent of its 34 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) live in urban environments, data on them is scarce. Many are not formally registered as refugees or IDPs, which limits the effectiveness of EiE because donors and United Nations projects typically do not fund programmes to educate unregistered refugees. The authors suggest revising assessment tools to better inform urban programming.

Quality and Learning—Hurdles to Effective Emergency Teaching. Both local and foreign teachers in emergency settings face unique challenges. While teacher quality is critical to learning quality, teachers who are refugees themselves—whether professional or recruited to fill gaps—often suffer from the same traumatic experiences, economic hardships, and unstable circumstances afflicting their students. Local-national teachers may have personal views on the conflict or crisis. On the other hand, well-meaning expatriates may have little or no experience in teaching or in crises. As a result, host-country teachers often take on increased class loads but are often not prepared to handle the psychosocial support needs of refugee students (or their expatriate colleagues).

Cost-Effective Delivery—Creating Synergy of Efforts. When it comes to delivering value for money, the team found that efforts to coordinate the separate funding streams of “first response” humanitarian relief and long-term development assistance have been ineffective. While humanitarian organisations can respond to crises in weeks or even days, their program funding typically lasts six months to one year and can vary year to year depending on priorities. In contrast, development programs tend to have consistent budgets over three to five years to achieve their goals, but can take more than one year to conceive, plan, and launch. Greater attention is required to finance, plan, and implement EiE assistance throughout education crises, which typically last for years and—for the children—multiple grade and learning levels. UNICEF’s Education Cannot Wait fund, launched in 2016, was cited as a potential model for merging humanitarian and development activities.

Political Settlements—Knowing What is Feasible. The research aimed to summarise what is known about establishing political consensus and coordinating government response to education emergencies (in various political contexts). There are few examples of “what works” in this area. One ongoing example comes from the Jordan Compact of 2016. Faced with an unprecedented influx of Syrian refugees, the Government of Jordan committed to schooling all Syrian refugee children in exchange for donor assistance to build more schools and address public service delivery and economic development. The Jordanian Ministry of Education reports that more than 126,000 Syrian refugee children had enrolled in school in host communities and camps for the 2016–2017 academic year.

Accountability—Leveraging Local Commitment. Providing EiE “should ideally be led by a national government, or aligned to national government policies or systems,” the authors write, because a locally led response is more sustainable and can also contribute to peacebuilding and national unity in the longer term. For example, in response to Typhoon Haiyan in 2013, the central Philippines government co-chaired the United Nations’ Education Cluster relief effort. The government-led approach was embedded within local Philippine government systems, where local actors employed their acute understanding of local needs and ways to organise. For example, they quickly identified alternative school spaces amid the destruction and inspected them for safety and suitability.

Systemic Solutions for Displaced Children

Ultimately, providing more stability for displaced children requires a long-term development approach, focused on inclusive economic growth and effective, legitimate institutions conducive to stability in fragile and conflict-affected states. This approach must include multi-year assistance in building systems for essential services such as education. If humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding actors can work in a more joined-up way to achieve education outcomes and ensure that EiE interventions are aligned as far as possible with national systems, the Guidance Note suggests, they have a better chance of building resilient schools, supporting teachers, and providing a good education for displaced and refugee children.

By Christian Haussner (DAI project manager), April 2018.

This blog was originally posted on DAI. Reposted with permission.

Persons with disabilities include ‘those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others’ (UNCRPD, 2006; MoGCSWHADM, 2013, p. 8). Despite decades of conflict and its impact on poverty and services, leaving many South Sudanese with different types of disabilities, there are no official statistics in relation to disability prevalence.

According to a national census carried out in 2008, before the 2011 independence of South Sudan, persons with disabilities accounted for 5.1% of the population, although the census is controversial and the number of disabled people believed to be an underestimate (Legge, 2016, p. 1; Anyang, 2016, p. 4; Sida, 2014, p. 1). This is due to both issues with how disability was defined and the likelihood that stigma prevented people from identifying themselves as being a person with disabilities (Legge, 2016, p. 1).

While a number of potential pathways out of poverty are available, not all rural poor can access these due to specific social and market relations. The poor are not homogenous, and can be differentiated along geographic, caste, gender, ethnicity and asset-holdings lines. Households in different social positions and with different economic capabilities participate differently in the nonfarm markets and achieve different benefits. Individual agency also plays an important role. As a body of literature, the papers suggest that education, training, land holding, access to credit, proximity to infrastructure and markets, and agro-ecological location are the major influencing
factors in the adoption of higher returning livelihood strategies.

However, as many children with disabilities are out of school, screening which takes place solely in schools may miss them. New and innovative screening technologies and tools are being developed, with the aim of overcoming some of the challenges faced in low and middle income countries. However, there appears to be very little evidence which looks at the impact of screening on education and learning outcomes of children with disabilities. A systematic review of education for children with disabilities in low and middle income finds that there is relatively little formal research which assesses strategies for ensuring quality education for children with disabilities, including in relation to impairment identification (Wapling, 2016, p. 3).

Screening involves the use of diagnostic tools/equipment to test for different impairments, to identify those at risk and in need of more in-depth assessment, so that appropriate help can be offered (Kuyini et al, 2015, p. 19). Teachers can provide first line screening for some impairments, although this requires other systems to be in place to take over subsequent follow up processes, including links with education and social development services (Bundy, 2011, p.119, 125).

There is a large amount of recently published policy relevant literature on this broad ranging subject. All of the literature remarks on the gender digital divide, and some papers focus entirely on this divide (see section 3). However, other dimensions – such as disability – were not highlighted as important issues or included in the executive summaries.

There are more boys than girls in agricultural child labour, and both tend to start young, sometimes before 10 years old. Girls tend to combine agricultural and domestic duties, and their work is more invisible, while male adolescents are more likely to be in hazardous work in agriculture than their female peers. Children from poor households, ethnic minorities, migrants and families with HIV/AIDS or disabled members are particularly vulnerable to agricultural child labour.

Other drivers include agricultural dependency, social norms and a lack of higher returns to basic schooling. Almost 60 per cent of girls and boys (aged 5–17 years) in hazardous work are found in agriculture. Situations of heightened harm and danger include forced and trafficked child labour for agriculture as well as conflict and emergency situations. Nevertheless age-appropriate tasks can contribute to children’s well-being and development – in particular in rural contexts with a lack of returns to formal education, labour-intensive agricultural livelihoods and social acceptance of child labour.