Going to school amidst a crisis requires flexibility, just ask refugees

For students, educators, and families all over the world, this school year is uniquely challenging. The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken the stability that comes with the reassurance that our children are receiving the education they need, leaving a seemingly endless mountain of obstacles in its wake. Even for refugee communities, who are accustomed to sudden interruptions in the educational cycle and can rely on a reserve of resiliency, COVID-19 has posed an unprecedented test. Yet, as we begin to emerge from one of the darkest years in recent memory and to plan for an uncertain future, we have an opportunity to reflect on the painful lessons learned, which will make our school systems stronger in the long run.

This pandemic is reinforcing a fundamental need to maintain flexibility; something that, for better or worse, 5.7 million Palestine refugees living in the Middle East have learned the hard way. This ability to adjust on the fly – to react, innovate and advance – must be sustained and improved if we want to meet the evolving needs of our students.

Just ask refugee students.

For the more than 540,000 Palestine refugee children attending UNRWA’s 711 schools across the Middle East today, adapting to unpredictable circumstances is nothing new. In Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza, physically going to school is sometimes simply not an option. Flexibility is a core feature of daily life, and it has become a crucial asset this year.

When the pandemic forced an abrupt end to regular in-person education last spring, UNRWA staff – like most of the world – quickly moved instruction online, wherever this was possible. In addition to activating the existing UNRWA systems operationalized during crises, such as UNRWA TV, mobile phone lessons, and computer-based interactive learning, the Agency also found new and creative ways to offer critical services to students, such as coordinating in-person student exam support in rotating shifts as well as making hard copies of teaching aid materials available to those who don’t have reliable internet access.

Throughout the pandemic, our students and staff have risen to the challenge. In June 2020, Israa, a young Palestine refugee in Syria, whose community was destroyed and is living as an internally displaced person in Damascus, earned a perfect score on the ninth-grade national exam. Nationally, only 68 percent of students passed this exam; at UNRWA schools, that number was 91 percent. “Education is a lifeline for us,” Israa said, “I have lost everything in my life, had to flee several times, but nobody can take what I’ve studied and learned away from me.” In Jordan, a robotics teacher named Samar Nazzal explain that while “COVID-19 was a sudden situation that we didn’t expect,” teachers like her have “tried to use all available resources to continue [to] educate our students.”

And now, we are launching an innovative centralized digital learning platform that prioritizes giving students a more comprehensive and consistent education during what continues to be a turbulent period. This technological advancement, spurred by necessity but buoyed by experience, allows the Agency to ensure that our educational programs are functional, up to date, and aligned with the UN values of neutrality, human rights, tolerance, equality and non-discrimination. The new platform provides an accessible and centrally-monitored system for teachers and administrators to upload and host instructional materials customized across grade, subject and host country.

When it comes to educating the half a million children UNRWA is responsible for, the stakes are high. As we have seen around the world, when schools must close and therefore can’t serve as the community anchors they normally are, social stability becomes harder to maintain. That is why keeping our students safe, in UN-run schools, and prepared for a brighter future is the utmost priority for our almost 20,000 teachers.

Providing education in one of the most volatile regions of the world means we always must be ready for unforeseen barriers. But as we further invest in the educational flexibility displayed this past year, we are ever more equipped to respond to the next challenge.

Just ask refugee students.