The summary available in French and English presents findings of the feasibility study and recommendations for relevant stakeholders (including the Ministry of Education, the Education Cluster and newly-formed Accelerated Education Working Group (AEWG) in the Central African Republic. It is hoped that this work will contribute to addressing the many challenges of access, quality and equity for children and youth who have been denied their right to education.
Refugees and internally displaced children and youth frequently miss substantial amounts of schooling. With each lost semester or year of schooling there is an increased risk that they will be unable to return to formal education and greater risks to their protection as a result. Responding to the needs of these children and youth has increasingly led governments and agencies to explore the possibility of providing accelerated education responses. Such responses can support children and youth to attain formal schooling equivalencies and can provide ports of re-entry into continued formal schooling at appropriate grade levels. Addressing the needs of overaged children with targeted age-appropriate programming increases learning and protection for all children and youth in both the formal school system and accelerated programmes.
The education sector in the Central African Republic has been severely affected by the crisis in the country since late 2012 and children – particularly girls – have been denied access to school due to the displacement, closure of schools and lack of access by pupils and teachers due to high-level insecurity. The subsequent humanitarian crisis of 2013-2014 has exacerbated challenges and led to what can be described as a "lost school year."
The potential for employing accelerated education programmes in the Central African Republic is of interest to the government and international donors for a variety reasons. The key motivation driving this interest is that an accelerated response has the ability to meet the educational needs of Central African children and youth who have missed out or had their education interrupted during the conflict, and can be modelled and implemented across the entire country.
Having over 15 years of experience implementing various forms of accelerated education programming, NRC commissioned an independent feasibility study in October 2015 to ascertain the accelerated education needs of the population and assess the feasibility of an NRC accelerated education programme for 2016. The study was carried out over a total period of seven weeks with a three-week field mission in Bangui and the prefecture of Mambere-Kadei. A total of eight schools were visited and 154 external stakeholders interviewed, including enrolled students, overaged and out-of-school children and youth, parents, teachers, primary school directors, civil society organisations and education authorities at central, regional and local levels.
Please contact Maureen Magee, NRC Country Director (maureen.magee@nrc.no) for further information.