Education in a Segregated Setting: Pathways for Learning Among Rohingya Refugee Children in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh

• In Event: Pathways for Learning in Conflict and Protracted Crisis Settings: Assessing the Drivers of Holistic Learning in Conflict Settings

Proposal

Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, is home to nearly one million Rohingya refugees who fled successive waves of violence in Myanmar, including the 2017 exodus when 745,000 people crossed the border. The Rohingya have been stateless since 1982, when the Citizenship Law introduced by the Myanmar government categorically excluded the Rohingya from the list of officially recognized ethnic groups eligible for full citizenship within the country. In Bangladesh, the Rohingya remain legally classified as “forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals,” excluded from formal education, accredited certification, and most public services. Nearly half of Rohingya children had never enrolled in school before displacement, and today they are confined to an education system shaped by restrictions, insecurity, and overlapping crises.

Within the refugee camps, children access learning through two primary provisions:
NGO-managed learning centers, funded by the humanitarian sector, which since 2020 have been allowed to deliver the Myanmar Curriculum (MC) but without accreditation;
Madrasas, established by religious leaders, with a focus on religious instruction, alongside literacy and numeracy. Some follow the MC, while others teach the Bangladeshi madrasa curriculum.

The quality of these provisions is limited. NGO centers often operate in temporary bamboo structures, staffed by one host-community teacher and one Rohingya facilitator, many without prior teaching experience or proficiency in Burmese—the mandated language of instruction. In madrasas, most teachers are male and underqualified, and instruction is shaped by religious priorities. Adolescent girls face additional barriers: household responsibilities, parental concerns over safety in mixed-gender environments, and restrictions tied to norms of modesty and purity.
This study addresses critical gaps in evidence by examining how these education provisions shape children’s learning and wellbeing trajectories, using the ERICC framework of access, quality, continuity, and coherence for learning. It involves 4,000 Rohingya children and 238 facilitators across 77 NGO learning centers, 46 community-based facilities, 21 Accelerated Learning Programs and 25 madrasas, following three cohorts (grades 3, 5 and 7) over two years. Data include student assessments in literacy, numeracy, socio-emotional learning (SEL), and wellbeing, as well as teacher/headteacher surveys, classroom observations, and qualitative interviews with students, caregivers, and educators.
The guiding questions are:
How have recent conflicts and crises in Cox’s Bazar (i.e. political protests, teacher protests, and facility closures) affected the educational experiences of Rohingya children and educators across madrasas and NGO learning facilities?
How do levels of literacy, numeracy, SEL and wellbeing vary by types of learning provision across NGO and madrasa schools, and how do they differ by gender and disability?
How do resources, curricula, and teaching practices influence quality?
What patterns of attendance, dropout, and progression shape continuity of education across different types of learning provision, especially for adolescent girls?
How coherent for learning are these overlapping provisions, and what implications does this have for children’s future opportunities?
The Bangladesh study will provide urgently needed empirical evidence on education in one of the world’s most restrictive refugee contexts, and insights into the risks and possibilities of parallel, non-accredited systems in protracted crises.

Authors

• Bindu Sunny, International Rescue Committee (IRC)

• Md Galib Hasan

• Md. Mohosin Abedin, International Rescue Committee

• Silvia Diazgranados, International Rescue Committee