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Pathways to Getting All Refugee Children into Quality Education

Tue, March 27, 5:00 to 6:30pm, Hilton Reforma, Floor: 4th Floor, Don Julián

Group Submission Type: Panel Session

Proposal

This session will look at the state of refugee education around the world and what the opportunities and mechanisms are for achieving a step change in getting all refugees access to good quality education.
Currently there are at least 3.5 million refugee children out of school. Those who do enrol have low attendance rates and the quality of the education they receive is often low. Almost 90% of these refugees are residing in low or middle income countries. These are countries that already have difficulty providing adequate services to their own populations, particularly marginalised groups.
The signing of the New York Declaration in 2016 affirms the global community's commitment that no refugee should be out of school for more than a few months after being displaced and states the principle of responsibility sharing. It also launched the Global Compact on Refugees. This compact, being developed by UNHCR, is a major opportunity to transform refugee responses to make them comprehensive, and funded under the principles of shared responsibility. Education forms a key part of this comprehensive response.
This panel will explore three pieces of work that inform the development of the Global Compact on Refugees.
Save the Children will present their research that sets out the case for global and national action in the three areas of investment, inclusion, and improvement for refugee education. This draws on existing work in papers such as Losing Out On Learning, research in Jordan, Uganda and Thailand, and draws together new data to include full costings for funding refugee education.
This is followed by UNHCR who will present on three aspects of their work on refugee education. Firstly, on the prioritisation of integrating refugees into national education systems and the challenges facing this approach. Secondly the need for flexible approaches, where national systems are still not available to refugees, that deal with issues such as language and accelerated programmes. Thirdly the issue of funding and how refugee education funding interacts with the wider humanitarian architecture. This will be framed around UNHCR's ongoing development of the Global Compact on Refugees
Finally Save the Children will present an in-depth piece of research looking at access to education for Asylum-Seeking and Refugee Children in Urban Areas of Indonesia and Thailand. The research collects information on migration journeys to explore the opportunities and challenges of urban life for children and presents a detailed and comprehensive overview of the challenges/barriers the most deprived children affected by migration (refugees and asylum-seeking children and their family) face regarding access to basic services, especially education. The study provides a set of recommendations to increase educational opportunities for asylum seeking and refugee children.

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