More than ten millions Syrians have displaced after the Syrian conflict started in 2011. Among these people, around 5 million of these people have moved to other countries, especially Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, and Lebanon. With around 3 million refugees, Turkey has received the largest number of Syrians by far (Jalbout, 2015). Given the fact that around one third of the refugees are school-age children (5-18), providing education to them is one of the biggest challenges for host countries. According to the 3RP Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan, the estimated number of registered Syrian children who were out of formal and informal education was 394.049 in Turkey (UNHCR, 2015). With this substantial number of refugee young people, the Turkish government has allocated significant resources and made many new arrangements with the aim of increasing the numbers of the Syrian child refugees receiving formal education. As a result, more than half millions of Syrian child refugees have been schooled. Consistent with these efforts, the Law on Foreigners and International Protection passed in 2014 that guaranteed the refugees with access to services such as education, healthcare, and employment and a Circular titled “Education for Foreigners” was published in 2014 in order to grant access to education (MoNE, 2014). According to the Circular, there are two opportunities for Syrian students to integrate into Turkish educational system. They can get education either in Temporary Education Centers (TECs) or Turkish public/private schools (MoNE, 2014). In addition to the legal arrangements and the establishments of TECs, Turkish government has also initiated several other important steps toward better educational opportunities for Syrian child refugees in Turkey. For example, MoNE (Ministry of National Education), in collaboration with UNICEF, has trained more than 20.000 of Syrian teachers working in TECs in terms of pedagogical knowledge. Around 5.000 Turkish language teachers and school counselors have also been employed to support Syrian students enrolled in both TECs and Turkish public schools (Coşkun, et al., 2017; Taştan & Çelik, 2017).

According to the official numbers, Turkey has been able to enroll 492.544 of 833.039 school-age refugee children into the schools by the end of 2017 (59% of school enrollment) and 604.183 of 976.200 by the end of 2017- 2018 academic year (63% of school enrollment). In addition, Turkey’s Ministry of National Education (MoNE) has been implementing several projects collaborating with international organizations such as UNICEF and EU to improve the quality of education provided to these children. While these efforts are very important, there are more things to do in order to integrate Syrian children in TECs to public schools, include all refugee children into the formal educational system, and improve the quality of education they receive by overcoming significant socio-economic challenges. These young refugee children face many significant challenges which are important barriers of school enrollment such as cost of attending school, security problems, lack of safe learning environments, lack of quality teachers and schools, lack of shelters, and access to school  (Children of Syria, 2014). In this context, the aim of this study is to present the current conditions and issues of TECs based on the views of Syrian teachers working in these schools.

This study was conducted in order to identify the problems experienced in the Temporary Training Centers by the refugees emigrated from Syria to Turkey because of the war. In this study, the researchers employed the phenomenological model since phenomenological studies are interested in describing the experiences of individuals in their daily routines (Creswell, 2013). In other words, phenomenological studies focus on understanding the existing situation from the views of individuals who have experienced it (Christensen, Johnson & Turner, 2010). The participants consisted of 22 Syrian teachers who were teaching in TECs. In this study, the data were collected through focus group interviews with participants. These interviews “involves engaging a small number of people in an informal group discussion (or discussions), ‘focused’ around a particular topic” (Wilkinson, 2004, p. 177). In focus groups, the environment is thought to be less threatening in terms of discussing different perceptions, ideas, and thoughts (Krueger & Casey, 2000). The interviews were conducted with teachers using an interview protocol that the researchers designed during the trainings given to teachers working in TECs in partnership with Ministry of National Education (MoNE) and United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF). Each of the interviews conducted by two researchers was accompanied by a moderator translator (Arabic to Turkish and vice versa). The analysis of the interviews was done with the MAXQDA which is commonly used as a qualitative data analysis program. Firstly, the recorded data was transcribed into a Microsoft World document concurrently with listening to the records. The focus group interviews were deciphered on a MAXQDA program. Then, the data are coded in the framework of the coding paradigm of Strauss and Corbin (Kuckartz, 2014; Strauss, 2003) according to the open, select and selective coding steps.

The teachers were asked about the difficulties and problems experienced in providing education for Syrian Child Refugees in TECs. Based on the analyses, the challenges that the teachers experienced were identified under three broad themes which were infrastructral, student related, and teacher related issues. In terms of infrastructural problems, need for educational materials, poor social activities, and issues related to school infrastructure were emphasized as the primary difficulties. The teachers report that there are complications with the provision of educational materials and books. As a second point, student related problems -financial issues, adaptation problems, transportation problems, and bullying and bias towards Syrian students- have been indicated as important difficulties by Syrian teachers. The teachers indicate that many students are unable to attend school due to lack of financial support. The poverty of the families causes the child labor become common among Syrian children. Also, the teachers believe that there is a lack of adequate psycho-social support in schools and coordinated strategy to address these challenges of bullying. Therefore, the teachers believe that there is a need for comprehensive strategy which includes teachers, children, and parents with the cooperation of the government for child safety. Lastly, discrimination towards Syrian teachers, low job security of teachers, low teacher motivation, and teachers from other professions were mostly mentioned teacher related issues by the participants of the study. The teachers in this study state that they have no job guarantee and call themselves as “volunteer teachers”. According to the teachers, it is hard to retain Syrian teachers since they have not guaranteed social rights and most are unable to register for work permits. The teachers complain about the insecure working contracts. The data analyzing process is still continuing. Once the process is completed, the results and conclusion will be clarified and presented at the meeting.

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