Yemen: Strengthening education services for conflict-affected children and youth

• In Event: Roundtable Group 7
  In Refereed Roundtable Session: Learning from USAID Arabic Literacy efforts across four Middle East and North Africa Countries

Proposal

Since 2014, Yemeni students have been coping with the effects of the ongoing conflict in the midst of one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises. Millions of children lack reliable access to school due to widespread displacement, damage to school facilities, lack of educational resources, and general insecurity in the country. USAID/Yemen’s has focused on ensuring continuity of support to students, families, and education system actors. USAID/Yemen has been the only development agency to provide support to the internationally recognized Government of Yemen in the development of teaching and learning materials, and ensuring their printing and distribution, including during the Covid-19 pandemic. Teachers in formal schools have struggled with limited access to materials since the start of the conflict, and what they could source was outdated and not in line with modern teaching and learning methodologies. In addition, there were no existing materials or framework for accelerated or non-formal education to support Yemen’s estimated 2 million out-of-school students to continue their education.

USAID/Yemen have made important strides in ensuring access to essential learning materials by supporting the MoE to update and develop literacy and numeracy materials for grades 1-3, which have not been produced since 2014. This has been done along with teacher training guides and manuals to support a pilot roll-out in 400 schools. 104,925 Students will benefit from the text books printing and distribution in Yemen. In addition, a package of materials for use in USAID-supported non-formal or remedial education was developed with the Ministry of Education, and is now being used by a number of other donors and local implementing partners. This includes grades 1-3 accelerated Basic Literacy and Numeracy materials, grades 4-8 Arabic, math, and science Accelerated Learning Program materials, and grades 1-6 Arabic, math, and science Self Learning Program materials that were accompanied by youtube instructional videos during the pandemic. USAID has been using ASER to periodically measure students' improvement in literature and numeracy. Remedial summer clubs are running to use the long summer breaks to improve the reading and numeracy skills for low performing students. USAID’s activities continue to address the critical challenge of access to education in Yemen, but a cornerstone of the portfolio has been filling the large resource gap with the development of a common basis for quality instruction for children. This aspect has been key to helping communities and the Ministry of Education meet students where they are in their education journeys.

Author

• Samah Abdel-Moneim Eid, USAID