How do you accommodate 18,900 learners in nine secondary schools with limited resources? This is the dilemma faced by the team managing education in the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya. Their solution? Create two schools in one.

As the education officer for Windle International Kenya, George Nandy oversees secondary education for Kakuma refugee camp and Kalobeyei Settlement. The organisation supports and implements education interventions in Kakuma which serves over 180,000 refugees from South Sudan, Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Ethiopia, and Uganda. Their work is supported by the Kenyan government, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and other donors and partners.

Growing up in a family of 18 children, with very few resources, George understands some of the hardships that refugee learners face.

“I’m here because one teacher sacrificed to put me through school, paying for my uniform and learning materials. I’m bound to help,” says George who taught in Kakuma schools for over 6 years before taking on his current role. “By working in the refugee camp, I get to help these learners who are all vulnerable. They have suffered so much trauma, and they face so many challenges. But by transforming their education, we can support them with the skills they need to create a successful future for themselves.”

Making the most of available resources helped transform education in Kakuma

While there are currently 21 primary schools in Kakuma refugee camp, there are only seven secondary schools. Before George and the team took on the task of transforming education in the refugee camp in 2015, thousands of learners were forced to give up their schooling as there simply wasn’t enough space to accommodate them.

“Facing the ever-increasing student population, we sat down with Windle’s then executive director, Dr. Marangu Njogu, who proposed the innovative two-in-one approach to schooling,” says George.

“The system capitalises on ‘time’ as one of the major resources at our disposal. We realised that if we divided the day in half, we could accommodate two schools, and twice as many learners in one building. Each school has its own set of teachers, led by a single ‘chief principal’ who is supported by two deputies. Even the learners’ uniforms are different to make sure they attend their designated school,” says George.

How does two-in-one work?

A conventional school day runs from 8:00 AM until 4:30 PM and incorporates short and long health breaks as well as sports, clubs and society meetings. “But in the two-in-one system, the activities are compressed, so only six hours are used up,” explains George.

“The morning school starts early from 6:40 AM to 12:20 PM with two short health breaks in between. Then there’s a ten-minute changeover between schools. The afternoon school starts at 12:30 PM and ends at 6:30 PM,” says George.

“Co-curricular activities, sports, clubs, societies, and meetings are planned for when the particular school is not on session. For instance, the morning school participates in non-class activities in the afternoon. The afternoon school participates in non-class activities during the mid-morning.”

Benefits of the two-in-one school system

“The two-in-one system means we don’t have to find the money to build new buildings,” says George.

“Desks, chairs, lockers, classrooms, laboratories, kitchen, toilets, hand-washing facilities, library, reference books, ICT facilities, playgrounds, sports facilities and assembly grounds are all shared by the two schools," says George.

The innovative system also helps decrease teacher fatigue.

“Some Kenyan schools use the double-shift system where learners attend in two shifts, but the same teachers stay throughout the day. However, this leads to teacher exhaustion. With two-in-one system, teachers are able to give their very best in all of their classes.”

A transformative new curriculum requires extensive resources

While the two-in-one solution is helping more learners access secondary education in the Kakuma refugee camp, the student to teacher ratio is still exceptionally high.

“Currently, the average is 120 learners per teacher. “So we are working with the Kenyan government, donors, and other organisations to try to solve this.”

Decreasing the ratio will be even more important in 2023 when the Kenyan government begins rolling out a new competency-based curriculum. Instead of focusing on grades, the approach focuses on helping learners develop the skills, knowledge & talents they need when they leave school, whether it’s for tertiary education, or the workplace. It is learner-centred instead of teacher-centred and allows each learner to progress and master skills at their own pace.

“With a focus on ICT skills, the new system will help the learners thrive in an everchanging world,” says George.

However, while the new curriculum has many benefits, it requires just 30 learners per class, and relies on the teacher paying more attention to each individual.

“Currently we employ 335 teachers for 18,900 learners, and counting… but the new curriculum will require more teachers, additional classrooms, laboratories, technology, textbooks, and learning materials.

“We rely on generous donors to help us manage these needs. Their support helps us build and develop schools for the Kakuma refugee children, giving them a chance to transform their future through education.”

Despite the challenges ahead, George believes that the competency-based approach will equip the learners with the skills and knowledge they need to pursue careers in the 21st century.

The peacemakers of the future

For George, making sure learners have access to a solid education is not just about helping them build more secure livelihoods. It’s also about ensuring they have the skills to make a positive impact on society.

“Education plays a major role in obtaining peace in our world,” says George. “A good education empowers the learners to return to their countries one day, to take part in conflict resolution, and peace-keeping, and become the leaders of the future.”

Learn more about the #TeachersTransform campaign as part of the Transforming Education Summit.

Photo credit: John Cummings

Chris Henderson, Co-Chair, Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) Teachers in Crisis Contexts (TiCC) Working Group and Teachers College, Columbia University.

In refugee-hosting contexts, teachers contribute more to children’s learning and well-being than any other school-level factor.  Refugee teachers also have strong local knowledge and the desire to contribute to better crisis response and recovery outcomes. However, despite their crucial role and the challenging context in which they ensure learning continuity, refugee teachers often do not receive the support they need.

They are visible to the humanitarian education sector, but remain largely neglected in the national education system sector reviews that drive multi-year education planning and in the budgets that address teachers’ needs. Thus, it is time to pay closer attention to the difficulties they face and to include them in the plans to achieve SDG 4.

Challenging teaching conditions

Teachers in refugee settings are faced with particularly challenging working conditions. In the regions where refugees are allowed to settle, functional classroom spaces, teaching and learning materials, and other basic resources are often missing. Their classrooms are more likely to be overcrowded, multi-aged, multi-ability, and multilingual, especially in the early years when essential literacy and numeracy skills are taught. They must often teach in shifts, covering less material in less time with lower expectations for learning achievement. They may also have to teach content in a second or third language, or they may need to use hybrid instructional approaches.

Refugee teachers also work with children and youth who have experienced or witnessed the acute and chronic suffering of their families and friends. These children and youth are more likely to present with learning or behavioural deficits related not only to the interruption of their education, but to the hardships they contend with on a daily basis.

Lack of training opportunities

Where pre-service and in-service professional development opportunities exist for refugee teachers, they are episodic with varying levels of quality. The diverse range of non-state actors providing teacher management and development support in settings of forced displacement also constrain predictable and sustained responses in meeting teachers’ professional, personal, and family needs.

An uncertain career path

Most refugee teachers live where their right to international protection is recognized. At its most basic, this means they have the right not to be forcibly returned to their home country. However, refugee protection does not automatically grant the recognition of qualifications for employment, neither does it grant access to continuous professional development opportunities when teachers are uncertified or underqualified.

Time to recognise the role of refugee teachers

So often we champion teachers and celebrate teachers’ work. However, as humanitarian sector policymakers and practitioners, we need to align our words with our actions and uphold our commitment to the profession by reimagining and transforming our understanding of teachers and the value of teachers’ work in refugee-hosting settings. Without sufficient support for and recognition of refugee teachers, education access and learning attainment for children affected by forced displacement will remain precarious and SDG Goal 4 will not be achieved. 

It is therefore time to deliver for refugee teachers the status and conditions they deserve and desperately need; it is time to make refugee teachers visible. A shift towards the inclusion of refugees in national education systems following the adoption of the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR) in 2018 provides an opportunity for action. This includes the provision of predictable and sustainable support for refugee teachers, continuous professional development, and access to fair and decent work conditions.

Towards a shared understanding of teachers in refugee-hosting settings

With the aim of including the above issues on the Transforming Education Summit Action Track 3 Agenda on “Teachers, Teaching, and the Teaching Profession”, and to work towards a harmonized understanding of teachers and teaching in refugee-hosting settings, UNHCR, INEE, and Education International (EI) are co-convening a meeting at the upcoming Transforming Education Pre-Summit in Paris.

We will bring together government, United Nations, international non-governmental organization, and civil society organization representatives alongside refugee teachers and youth from Chad, Kenya, and Venezuela to discuss and debate the following provocations:

1. Who do we consider to be “teachers” in refugee hosting settings? Might new definitions and pre-conditions for entry into the profession be one part of the solution to the global teacher shortage? 
2. How, if at all, do we recognize and regularize community and refugee teachers as part of the professional teacher workforce in refugee hosting settings?
3. What are the limitations or barriers of current legal frameworks and financing mechanisms, and what innovative approaches exist to overcome financing challenges? 

This session will also be an opportunity to give refugee teachers and youth a platform to share their experiences and inform the agenda for transforming the provision of education in crisis settings globally.  

A key outcome of this meeting will be a memo of recommendations, produced by INEE, UNHCR and EI meeting moderators, and submitted to the UNESCO International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 for consideration and inclusion in subsequent Transforming Education Summit statements relating to Action Track 3. 

We invite you to participate in person or via webcast in this important meeting from 1.00pm to 3.00pm CET on Thursday June 30th. We need your voice to help forefront and elevate refugee teachers at the Transforming Education Summit in New York in September. 

For more details, please see the pre-summit programme here.    

Hero photo: M'Bera refugee camp, Mauritania. Photo: EU/ECHO/José Cendón

In the face of increasing global disruptions and crises, ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all by 2030 (SDG 4) will not be possible unless education planning is crisis-sensitive. Teachers, who are the most important in-school factor influencing student achievement, are often at the frontline in situations of crisis. For this reason, it is imperative to prioritize, support and protect teachers through adequate education policy and planning.

Building on the Guidance Note on Developing a Crisis-Sensitive Teacher Policy, jointly developed by UNESCO, UNHCR, ILO, and UNICEF in 2020 under the Norwegian Teacher Initiative (NTI), the webinar on Crisis-Sensitive Teacher Policy and Planning in Emergency and Displacement Situations on 16 September brought together policy experts, country representatives and teachers to shed a light on what is needed to ensure that teacher policy is crisis-sensitive.

In a discussion that touched upon the key policy areas of the guide, participants shared lessons learned during previous and ongoing crises, expanded on the role of teachers in emergency and displacement contexts and advocated for increased support for teachers in such contexts.

Displacement creates challenges for teacher recruitment, training and deployment  

If Covid-19 highlighted at a global level the hardships educators confront when schooling is disrupted, this pandemic is only one among many situations of crisis that challenge the continuity and quality of education worldwide. According to UNHCR (2021), at the end of 2020, 82.4 million people were forcibly displaced due to violent conflict, persecution and natural disasters.

Uganda, which has experienced several displacement crises, is currently one of the largest refugee-hosting countries in Africa. It hosts over 1.4 million refugees, making up 3.6 % of the country's total population. During the webinar, Ms. Constance Alezuyo, Coordinator of the National Education Response Plan for Refugees and Host Communities, explained that one of the biggest challenges her country faced in providing quality education for refugee children and youth has been recruiting teachers to live and work in the remote places where refugees are located. Furthermore, even when qualified teachers willing to relocate are found, it is difficult to provide them with adequate housing.

Ms. Angéline Neya Donbwa, Technical Secretary for Education in Emergencies in Burkina Faso, echoed Ms. Alezuyo’s assessment. She added that with over of 1.4 million internally displaced persons and 2,444 schools closed in her country, redeployment of teachers from conflict-ridden areas to overcrowded host villages in safer zones has been a major challenge. Grace*, an internally displaced teacher also from Burkina Faso, expanded on the challenges of teaching children who have been traumatized. She explained that some of her students had trouble concentrating in class, were afraid or reacted in aggressive or violent ways. She also noted that in her classroom she had to address the needs of internally displaced children as well as be responsive to the needs of the children of the host community.

Psychosocial and financial support are essential for both students and teachers

Psychosocial support stands out as an important dimension of crisis-sensitive planning. Ms. Neya Donbwa explained that the need for this type of support has clearly been expressed by communities affected by insecurity and violence in her country. In addition to needing support to cope with traumatic situations themselves, teachers need to be able to deal with the physical and emotional impact of the crisis on their students. This has led Ms. Neya Donbwa’s team to develop a module for dealing with traumatic situations to supplement their “Safe School” trainings designed to prepare teachers for crisis situations.   

Moreover, teachers’ financial stability is often impacted during crisis and emergency situations. Ms. Neya Donbwa explained that continuing to pay teachers’ salaries when they had to flee unsafe areas is one of the provisions in their crisis teacher management strategy. Similarly, Ms. Alezuyo explained that during times of crisis in Uganda, government school teachers kept receiving their salaries until they were redeployed. However, this was not the case for private school teachers during the Covid-19 crisis, as Ms. Stella Turehe, a teacher from Uganda explained. Ms. Turehe shared that the financial pressures private schools faced during this crisis led to many school closures and teachers losing their jobs.

Complying with sanitary measures demands flexibility and innovation

Complying with Covid-19 sanitary measures was also difficult for schools and at times, led to their complete closure. In Uganda, the measures issued by the Ministry of Health capped student-teacher ratios at 20 students per teacher. According to Ms. Turehe, refugee settlement schools - which have high enrolment numbers – have struggled to reopen. However, in response to this, teachers have initiated a number of actions with the support of NGOs, such as devising a double shift system to allow schools to re-open, and promoting e-learning through tablets and group-learning in refugee students’ communities.

Moreover, teachers also innovated to support the whole school community during the COVID-19 crisis in Uganda. This involved organizing back-to-school campaigns, setting up committees to connect with learners and parents, forming student clubs, and offering guidance to teens.

The importance of communication and consultation mechanisms

Teacher communication and feedback mechanisms are essential to ensuring that policy-makers are adequately informed about the rapidly changing conditions that characterize crisis situations. Ms. Alezuyo explained that there are different levels of communication between policy-makers, teachers and communities in Uganda and how they are adapted to crisis-sensitive education planning. The teacher management information system tracks teachers’ levels of training and experience which facilitates teacher deployment and efficient planning during crises. Communication at school and community level has adapted, including through mobile phones, radios and social media platforms.

Consultation for new module on Crisis-Sensitive Teacher Policy

The webinar also launched an international consultation to develop a new module on Crisis-Sensitive Teacher Policy and Planning which will complement the Teacher Policy Development Guide developed by the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030. The module has been developed with the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP).

The draft module is available for comments and suggested case studies at the link below:

English: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NC8h2fNfjYj3CxSI2jkQWOYjy2v5Zz1N/edit

French: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E6WlaCuoeDGyi6WHTZPaUUAcHntbB97t/edit?rtpof=true&sd=true

Please submit your comments and suggestions by 1 October to sm.richter@unesco.org.

*Name has been changed for security reasons 

Photo credit: UNHCR/Eduardo Soteras