A Closer Look at the Evidence: Education in Emergencies

• In Event: From education in emergencies to peace education: Towards a pedagogy of peace

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to evaluate the evidence around three key questions concerning education in emergencies: Firstly the impact of different types of emergencies on education; secondly, the extent to which communities prioritise education in emergencies; and thirdly the financing landscape of education in emergencies. The paper uses a rigorous literature review technique to answer ten sub-questions within the three core questions. This is supplemented by two desk-based case-studies in Haiti and DRC. These focus on the level of prioritisation communities place on education compared to other sectors, the nature of the education response and the financing characteristics of the education response.

The main sources include journal articles and grey literature that are publicly available, such as surveys and post-disaster needs assessments carried out by NGOs.

One main finding is that for communities across a range of emergencies, from protracted conflict to acute disaster, education is a high priority sector. For children and youth, education is the most important sector and for communities overall, education regularly features as a top three priority.

In addition, there is a significant quantity of research on the negative impacts of conflicts on education. Most of this research deals with children’s enrolment and there is no research on learning outcomes. Most often girls and the poorest suffer most from the impacts of conflict. Boys can be more negatively affected in situations where the conflict specifically targets them. There is very little systematic research concerning the impacts of disasters and other types of emergencies on education.

Moreover, there is also a lack of systematic research on the financing of education in emergencies. There is research available on the spending patterns of humanitarian aid that show that education as a sector compared to other sectors receives less of a proportion of financial requests than other sectors

Key recommendations include:
1) The need for greater investment in data
2) In-depth research focused on specific countries and regions experiencing emergencies would add greater value at this point vs. multi-country
3) Ideally, longitudinal research should be conducted in order to capture trends during different phases and types of emergencies.
4) Research conducted around disruption to education in emergencies should go beyond analysis of enrolment to look at broader issues of quality, equity, and school to work transitions.
5) Given evidence of differing impacts of emergencies on different age groups, it is particularly important to go beyond primary education to include analysis of secondary and higher education in emergency situations.
6) There appears to be very little research to date on the economics of education in emergencies.
7) Analysis of funding sources to education in emergencies needs to look beyond just humanitarian funding in order to gain a better understanding of the role of domestic budget, household expenditure and development aid. In addition, research looking at the ability of humanitarian aid to catalyse or supplement other sources of funding would be useful.
8) Work could usefully be done on considering a theory of change for education in emergencies, looking at how the various elements explored in this review alongside other issues fit together.
9) Research carried out on the incentives of different actors in the dealing with education in emergencies or not would help clarify why it is such an underfunded and overlooked sector and what incentives would need to change to catalyse progress in this area.

Authors

• Sébastien Hine, Overseas Development Institute

• Susan Nicolai, Overseas Development Institute