“Most refugee parents I speak to tell me that the most important thing to them is for their children to be able to get back into school to continue with their education.” says Frosse Dabit, NRC’s education manager for Lebanon.
“However, special measures need to be taken to make formal education more accessible to refugee children from Syria who are in Lebanon; both so that these children can enter into schools and so that they can stay in schools.” she says.
The Syrian school curriculum is different to the Lebanese one as in Syria all the classes were in Arabic whereas in Lebanon they are in three languages: Arabic, English and French. This means that without extra support many children from Syria cannot keep up in Lebanese schools.
“In our school, we have more Syrian children than Lebanese children now. Without the extra support to adjust to the new curriculum they would really struggle to stay in school”, says Ustaz Mohamad, the Head Teacher of a Lebanese school that NRC supports in southern Lebanon.
So that more refugee children can access education, schools across the country have started running a second shift. NRC has supported almost 4,000 Syrian children to access education through the second shift. “Refugee children from Syria must have access to accredited education during their stay in Lebanon; this can be either through the Lebanese public school system or made available in other settings.” Dabit adds.
NRC offers quality education support for Palestinian and Syrian refugee children and professional development for teachers in public Lebanese and UNRWA schools in Lebanon. This includes learning support at the weekends for refugee and Lebanese children that need extra support with their studies. Over 14,000 Syrian and Palestinian refugee children benefit from NRC’s education programme throughout Lebanon.
NRC also supports out of school refugee and Lebanese children with basic numeracy and literacy classes in community centres across Lebanon. Only 43,000 of 250,000 Syrian refugee children were able to enter the public school system in the 2012/2013 academic year.
For more information, please contact:
Olivia Kalis, Advocacy and Information Advisor, NRC Lebanon on olivia.kalis@nrc.no
Frosse Dabit, Education Programme Manager, NRC Lebanon on frosse.dabit@nrc.no
