The First Page: Schooling for Refugee Children

THE FIRST PAGE

Schooling for Refugee Children:
A Social Justice Perspective Informed by Children from Syria

by Eleanore Hargreaves, Brian Lally, Bassel Akar, Jumana Al-Waeli, and Jasmine Costello

5 June 2024

The First Page presents the first page of books that are launched as part of the IAS Book Launch Programme. On 10 June 2024, Eleanore Hargreaves, Brian Lally, Bassel Akar, Jumana Al-Waeli, and Jasmine Costello, launch their collaborative book Schooling for Refugee Children, an exploration of their interactions with refugee children displaced from Syria to the Lebanese borders and London. Through a programme of carefully tailored research activities, they analyse the children’s representations of their personal journeys and current circumstances, especially with regard to ongoing schooling. The children’s experiences are expressed through their own words and drawings, disrupting the stereotype of children as ‘receivers’ rather than empowered actors, and challenging traditional solutions for improving schooling.

Raghida’s story
I am a Syrian girl who was forced to migrate out of my country. My name is Raghida. I am 14 years old, born on the 4th of January 2005. I was a little girl when war started devastating my country. I left Syria when I was 7 years old; and I came to Lebanon as my grandmother and aunt were already living here. When we came to Lebanon, I went with my family to live in a camp for Syrian refugees, and we lived there for 2 years. One day, the owner of the camp came at 6 pm, and told everyone in the camp: ‘You should all leave the camp by 2 pm tomorrow.’ The next day, my father and my aunt started looking for a place. It was raining heavily. The man who owned the camp came and made everyone leave in 2 hours; so, we started moving our stuff in the rain to the new place. After two weeks, another man came to see us and asked us, along with the people who lived in the previous camp, to go with him to another camp and live there; thus, we went there, and we have been living in [the second] camp for 5 years now.
I live with my family, which consists of my mum, my dad, two sisters and one brother. Across from this camp, there is a school in which my siblings and I are enrolled. I studied in this school from Grade 2 to Grade 6 [ages 8 to 12]. In the school, there were wonderful teachers. The school was called: the School of Hope, Sawasia. Teachers were kind to us and they treated us like they treat their own children or siblings. The headteacher’s name was Wisam; he was a great, understanding and respectful headteacher.

This book examines the social justice of – and through – schooling for children like Raghida, who, because of war, are forced to leave the home they knew, where they felt safe, where they belonged, and take refuge in another country. Globally, as of 2022, some 35.3 million people were counted as refugees, with 1.9 million born as refugees between 2018 and 2022. Of the global total in 2022, more than 7.6 million children were aged between 5 and 17 years (UNHCR, 2023). We focus on the refugees who left Syria after the crisis that began in 2011. The Syrian conflict that erupted in that year was far from being over by the beginning of the main research project that we conducted in 2019 and that guided the work in this book. During that crisis, an estimated 11 million people were forced to leave their communities in Syria (UNOCHA, 2016). The Government of Lebanon estimated that, as of November 2019, at least 1.5 million Syrian citizens were seeking refuge in Lebanon (UNHCR, 2020a). Raghida and her family were among these citizens. She found refuge in the Multi-Aid Programs (MAPs) community in Beqaa (sometimes spelt Bekaa), Lebanon.

Our interest in working with Syrian refugee children stems from our fundamental belief that all children have the right to a socially just education. From this perspective, schooling would allow them to develop their capacities; respond to their needs; ensure their right to participate on a par with all other children; and support their right to make their needs heard. Many disadvantaged children, including Syrian refugee children, are prevented from exercising these fundamental rights, especially those in Lebanese camps and temporary settlements. Furthermore, the knowledge field of education for refugees relies heavily on context- and culture-specific circumstances such as the political, geographical, social, legal and economic distances between the host country and the displaced country (Anderson et al., 2004). Hence, we approach the work in this book with profound respect for the highly contextualised and nuanced narratives of Syrian refugee children at particular sites in Lebanon and England. It is against this backdrop that we conducted three projects, each one corresponding to a case study – presented later in this book – that offered a platform for forcibly displaced and disadvantaged Syrian refugee children in their respective contexts in the two aforementioned countries to share their stories and represent their different educational experiences. By communicating and examining the children’s representations, we embody an unwavering commitment to safeguarding the dignity of forcibly displaced children. Moreover, the children exercise their right to parity of participation in social life by representing their own needs, views and references in safety.

Before introducing the three case studies, we will briefly describe the status of Syrian children who fled the war in Syria to neighbouring countries, with a focus on Lebanon.

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ELEANORE HARGREAVES is Professor of Learning and Pedagogy at the UCL Institute of Education.

BRIAN LALLY is an educator and researcher with extensive experience in teaching, education leadership and safeguarding/child protection.

BASSEL AKAR is Research Fellow at Centro de Estudos Africanos, Universidade do Porto.

JUMANA AL-WAELI is a postdoctoral research fellow at Ulster University.

JASMINE COSTELLO is a project manager at Student Achievement Partners where she designs resources and professional learning for teachers.

Their book launch will take place on 10 June 2024 at the Institute of Advanced Studies. More information.

Lead Image: ‘My journey to Lebanon’ by a pupil at MAPs. © The authors.