It is clear that, for PSD practitioners, the usual toolbox of solutions is not sufficient to meet the challenges that exist. These include firstly a focus on macroeconomic stability, which though technically not part of a PSD portfolio is necessary to provide support to countries responding to significant instability. Reform of the regulatory environment is a key challenge in these countries, but making change happen is complicated by elite control and poor implementation capacities on the part of public servants. As a result, much PSD effort goes on firm-level activities, to support companies to survive and expand even in a problematic wider context. It is also clear that in these contexts, PSD programming needs to be very closely tied to other streams of development activity, in particular interventions on issues of governance and peacebuilding. However, factors such as education and infrastructure are also important to the longer-term development of the private sector, and therefore PSD needs to link closely to activities in these areas too. Programming needs to be flexible and adaptive and responsive to change as it happens, as well as needing to pick up and exploit opportunities as they arise. The combination of conflict and middle-income challenges often make the reform agenda seem huge and undoable. By focusing on what might be relatively small areas of reform, practitioners are in a better position to make change happen.

This study shares many of the conclusions of the 2016 study looking at lower-middle-income countries. These include: challenges with elite control and the impact this has on the growth of the private sector; a poor and opaque regulatory environment; and the need to see PSD programming as part of an overall approach in a country, in particular with interventions focused on good governance. However, this study has also identified significant additional issues stemming from the addition of conflict dynamics. First, the regional context in which a country exists is extremely important, meaning programming needs to consider the regional as well as the national context. Second, the implications of conflict may lie as much in the fear of instability as much as in the reality of it. Third, and most importantly, the conflict dimension means that the stakes are much higher. The skein of interests and networks that prevents a fragile situation getting worse is complex and often opaque. Development programming needs to be very sensitive and undertake detailed and appropriate analysis to ensure that interventions improve the situation or at the very least do not destabilise the status quo.

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.

New DFID-funded research focuses on children’s learning and their exposure to trauma to build a picture of early primary education in opposition-held areas. In combining data on academic performance and wellbeing with insights from school staff, researchers suggest evidence-based steps to begin repairing the damage done to Syrian children’s education.

This is a Chemonics/DFID policy brief developed with support of HEART.

The evidence base on school-related violence must be improved to inform policies (Antonowicz 2010). To assess the evidence that does exist, this helpdesk report presents a non-systematic review of the evidence on school-related violence. It is based on the evidence found through a rapid internet search and through consultation with experts in this field. The report is broken down into four sections: reducing and preventing school-related violence; safe, inclusive and violence-free schools; cyber bullying; and school-related gender-based violence. It is recognised that the topic of school-related violence is complex and multifaceted. While this report aims to offer a useful synthesis of the evidence available, as well as relevant case studies and policy recommendations, it only scratches the surface of a very large and pressing global problem.

The evidence base on school-related violence must be improved to inform policies (Antonowicz 2010). To assess the evidence that does exist, this helpdesk report presents a non-systematic review of the evidence on school-related violence. It is based on the evidence found through a rapid internet search and through consultation with experts in this field.

The report is broken down into four sections: reducing and preventing school-related violence; safe, inclusive and violence-free schools; cyber bullying; and school-related gender-based violence. It is recognised that the topic of school-related violence is complex and multifaceted. While this report aims to offer a useful synthesis of the evidence available, as well as relevant case studies and policy recommendations, it only scratches the surface of a very large and pressing global problem.

This rapid literature review sets out to identify evidence on approaches to measuring the prevalence of violence in schools across low and middle income countries and the data available based on these measurement approaches. The review includes a list of key sources of evidence on measurements and a review of statistical data on the the prevalence of violence in schools for low and middle income countries globally.

A psychosocial approach moves away from focusing on individual clinically based diagnoses to focusing on holistic, broad-based preventative programmes that promote resilience and develop coping strategies across the entire affected group. This leads to improvements in general stress related symptoms among those with and without specific disorders, and can thereby significantly reduce the numbers of those that do require any specialist intervention. It is therefore important that psycho-social programmes are implemented through a complementary, integrated and multisectoral approach.

This report maps the education response to the crisis in Syria and is current as of December 2013. Data on the current crises and education provision offered in Syria as well as in Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Northern Iraq/Kurdistan and Egypt presented in this report is based on a survey of the International Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) members and partners, and information shared by members of the INEE Working Group on Minimum Standards for education in emergencies and the INEE Steering Group.

In addition to desk based research, 34 respondents representing 27 different agencies undertook a survey. Respondents reported working or the intention to work in Syria and seven neighbouring countries involved in humanitarian response related to the Syrian conflict. Information was shared on work completed since the beginning of the conflict as well as work planned for 2014. The greatest number of respondents (50.0%) worked or were planning to work in Lebanon, with Jordan as the second most common location for educational interventions (35.3%). 85.3% of respondents indicated that they had been providing educational humanitarian services in 2013, with 35.3% and 82.4% reporting to have worked in 2012 or planning to work in 2014, respectively.

According to UNICEF (2009) effective child-centred learning is important in promoting the psychosocial well-being of both learners and teachers. Evidence shows that students’ relationships with teachers are important predictors for academic performance and positive health and social behaviours. Several meta-studies identified perceptions of teacher fairness and teacher respect for students as important contributors to resilience and psychosocial wellbeing.

To strengthen its efforts in promoting psychosocial support within educational programming in emergencies, UNICEF, Save the Children, International Rescue Committee, amongst others have emphasised the importance of training teachers and school counsellors. In the context of the Syrian conflict, the influx of Syrian children has stretched educational resources in Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey, and an urgent concern is that, in addition to the shortage of material resources in these contexts, most teachers have not been trained in addressing the needs of traumatised children, some of whom may exhibit difficult behaviours (Sirin & Rogers-Sirin, 2015; Shuayb, Makkouk, & Tuttunj 2014).

Until recently, arts and sport/physical education particularly, remained on the periphery of mainstream humanitarian and development programming, and given less importance in comparison to other development objectives. Now, however, there is an increasing understanding that sport does not have to contend with other development or humanitarian priorities but can be a means for addressing them. This was affirmed multilaterally through the creation of the United Nations Office on Sport Development and Peace (UNOSDP) in 2001 and the subsequent United Nations Task Force on Sport for Development and Peace which concluded in its 2003 report that “sport offers a cost-effective tool to meet many development and peace challenges, and help achieve the MDGs [the UN’s Millennium Development Goals].” (USAID, n.d., p. 4).

With regards to arts programmes, though there is generally support from some UN agencies as well as international and national level organisations, there is currently no system level mechanisms, regional or national level coordination nor any global agencies dedicated to this area of programming.

There are considerable differences in people’s reasons for migrating, either internally or internationally, depending on where they come from and their personal circumstances. Often cited reasons are to escape conflict, get a better job, provide remittances to their families, or to help a family member. In short, people mostly migrate to improve their circumstances (Devictor, 2016).

The literature here suggests that education is not often a primary driver of migration, either as a push or pull factor, except in the cases of young people going to universities abroad, and sometimes to get into better, more distant, schools than their local ones. Where there has been a deliberate decision to study is the only circumstance noted here in which education is the primary driver of migration. Education is usually viewed as a secondary driver, or one among many socio-economic factors that contribute to a better life. The primary drivers of all kinds of internal and international migration are security concerns, livelihoods opportunities, and economic
incentives.