New Directions in Education in Emergencies Data

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

In stable contexts, education data is often taken for granted by development partners and governments. The importance of reliable education data to long-term growth and development cannot be overstated: it is necessary for planning, decision-making, effective implementation, course correction, and advocacy. However, in crisis and conflict-affected contexts, policymakers and practitioners have come to expect that education data will be incomplete, inaccessible, and unreliable. The challenge is not a new one: for the most part, humanitarian and development partners lack shared definitions, frameworks and indicators, and data security concerns often inhibit efforts to coordinate and share information. Data collection is sporadic and inconsistent, with programmatic data collected separately for both humanitarian and development actors, and data collected in different ways for refugees, internally displaced persons, and host communities. Even data that is available electronically is often very difficult to navigate because there are many disparate forms and different dissemination venues.

Recent discussions around improving humanitarian-development coherence in the education sector have included a focus on data and collective outcomes as a starting point. In fact, the New Way of Working, which was first conceptualized at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, can be described as working over multiple years, based on the comparative advantage of a diverse range of actors, including those outside the UN system, towards collective outcomes. A collective outcome can be described as the result that development and humanitarian actors (and other relevant actors) contribute to achieving at the end of 3-5 years to reduce needs, risk, and vulnerability. Improved and aligned education data in conflict and crisis-affected contexts can, and must, serve as a starting point towards collective outcomes in the education sector, building coherence across humanitarian and development partners.

To begin discussing and addressing some of these challenges, this panel brings together key actors from the humanitarian and development sectors that are exploring education data issues in refugee hosting and emergency contexts. Each of these actors will share recent analyses, initiatives and innovations for understanding the education data landscape in emergency and refugee contexts and improving data quality, coverage and accessibility. The panel will be chaired by USAID’s Christine Capacci-Carneal of the Middle East Bureau, who will open the session by framing the panel around ongoing data challenges for development and humanitarian partners working in the education sector. Following the presentations, New York University’s Dana Burde, a known expert in education in emergencies data and research, will serve as discussant for the panel, providing a high-level summary of key takeaways and moderating a discussion with questions from the audience.

Presentations will include representatives of FHI 360, UNESCO- Global Education Monitoring Report, the Global Coalition to Prevent Education from Attack, and the People’s Action for Learning (PAL) Network. To begin, FHI 360’s Anne Smiley will share the high-level results of a recent education data mapping and stakeholder consultation process in the Middle East region, focused on Syria, Iraq and Yemen, conducted with the support of USAID. Based on these results, FHI 360 will discuss emerging plans for the development of a Knowledge Collective and capacity building activities oriented towards harmonizing education data efforts in crisis contexts across the humanitarian and development sectors, with a focus on how different actors use data. This will be followed by a presentation from Yuki Murakami of UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report, focused on tracking international financing data for refugee education and highlighting a need for better tracking of spending. Amy Kapit of the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack will present on recent work to improve the measurement and availability of data on attacks on education globally. The final presentation by Hannah-May Wilson of the People’s Action for Learning (PAL) Network will explore the use of citizen-led assessments in conflict and emergency contexts, emerging from an ongoing global mapping study that shows that citizen-led assessments have been used with displaced and refugee children in contexts including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon, Uganda, Niger, and Nigeria.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Education, Conflict, and Emergencies

Chair

• Christine Capacci-Carneal, USAID Middle East Bureau

Individual Presentations

• Mapping education data in Middle Eastern crisis contexts: What we learned and where to go from here - Anne Smiley, FHI 360

• Linking aid statistics and humanitarian aid flows to track financing of refugee education - Manos Antoninis, UNESCO; Yuki Murakami, UNESCO

• Education under attack: New directions for analyzing attacks on students, educators, and educational facilities - Amy Kapit, Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack

• Using citizen-led assessment tools to measure learning for refugee children - Hannah-May Wilson, People's Action for Learning (PAL) Network

Discussant

• Dana Burde, New York University