Contribution:

 More than 6.6 million Syrians have been displaced out of their country since the outbreak of the Syrian war in 2011, while another 6.7 million people remain internally displaced (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, 2021). This has led to an exceptional refugee crisis in the world, the largest since the Second World War (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2016). Rutter (2006, p.24) argued that ‘there is no clear-cut definition of what constitutes migration or who are migrants. She distinguished voluntary migration, say for employment purposes, from forced migration that occurs due to crisis and conflicts.

The right to education for all refugee children is declared in Article 22 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees under which all the signatory states ‘shall accord to refugees the same treatment as is accorded to nationals with respect to elementary education’ (UNHCR, 1951, p.6). Although the right to quality education has been recognized as a fundamental human right, about half of school-age refugee children are out of school (UNHCR, 2019). According to the literature, refugees receive their education, mainly, through three structures: ‘in separate, refugee-only schools in refugee camps; in national schools, primarily in urban areas of countries of first asylum; and in informal schools, in camps or urban areas, initiated by refugee communities’ (Dryden-Peterson, 2016, p.138).

The schooling experiences of new refugee children play a vital role in their social inclusion in the wider community (Peterson et al., 2017). It is particularly important in the case of Syrian given the ongoing war in Syria which indicates that returning home is highly unlikely for current refugees, at least in the foreseen future. In addition, it cannot be excluded the possibility of more people seeking refuge over the coming years.  

This paper is concerned with the education of Syrian children within the national education systems where they settle. Refugee camps fall within the education in conflict and emergencies area which is beyond the scope of this review.

The paper is based on a systematic review of the literature that aims to critically explore the educational experiences, opportunities, and challenges of Syrian refugee children in different contexts. Knowledge contribution of this literature review about Syrian children’s education related to potentially useful insights to some other refugee groups with similar circumstances, in Europe and beyond. It can provide a useful overview of the educational experiences, challenges, and opportunities for refugees and their host societies.

The review focuses on identifying two important aspects of the educational experiences of Syrian children: the achievements, practices, moments, and policies that can play a positive role in boosting the overall education experience of children; and the barriers that may hinder their schooling experience. These may contribute to proposing an informed service provision to Syrian refugee children in different countries and may lead to better overall educational experiences for them.  

Methodology: This systematic review adopted a consistent, comprehensive, and transparent approach to searching the literature (Atkinson et al., 2015). Searching the literature was done through two databases: Web of Science, and Scopus. Keywords included Syrian, refugee, education, schooling, asylum seeker, crisis, war, children, school, inclusion, displaced, migrant were used on both databases. Inclusion criteria were restricted to peer-reviewed empirical studies with a focus on Syrian refugee education that were published in English in the last ten years. The reason behind setting the timespan as 2011-2021 was because the Syrian crisis started in 2011. The search process was conducted in February 2021. Papers that appeared in search results were first filtered based on title screening. When the title of a given paper had been deemed relevant abstract screening was conducted. 75 papers were found during the title screening stage. This was followed by abstract screening that resulted in excluding 43 papers— including 2 duplicates. The main reasons for exclusion were the focus not on education, research specific to higher education, the sample entirely from university students, the focus on internal displaced Syrian, and the focus on education in refugee camps. The remaining 32 papers were read in full to verify their inclusion against the criteria. As a result, a further 7 papers were excluded. The reasons for excluding papers at this stage included: participants were adults only, focus not on education, focus not on Syrians, and not empirical. Thus, the final review consisted of 25 papers.

Findings/Outcomes: This literature review provided a deeper understanding of the schooling practices of Syrian children through the lens of different stakeholders. Findings revealed that most papers (22) used qualitative research, one paper adopted quantitative research, and two were designed with mixed research methodology. The included papers were from seven countries: Turkey (16), Lebanon (5), Jordan (1), Iceland (1), Canada and Germany (1), and the United Kingdom (UK) (1). Research on primary school contexts (n=14) was much more prevalent compared to secondary schools (n=8). Interviews were used as a method for data collection in most papers (n=23), among other methods such as focus group (n=2), observation (n=11), questionnaire (n=2), survey (n=1), and document analysis (n=4). Participants included classroom teachers, Syrian children and adults, school principals, policy actors, special educators, education administrators, and education officials, non-Syrian students, and parents. Classroom teachers were favoured to be recruited as they were employed in 16 out of 25 papers. The findings were organised into five main themes: Language barrier; Integration/Inclusion challenge; Education System; Underprepared schools and educators; and Social, economic, and psychological issues. While there was a consensus in the papers about the importance of education for refugee children, disparities were obvious in terms of education provision between the Western countries and the Arab countries. Turkey could be classified in the middle between the abundance of available services reported in studies conducted in the Western countries and the lack of basic resources reported in studies based for example in Jordan and Lebanon. The findings revealed that the education of Syrian refugee students encountered great challenges despite the vigorous attempts by the host countries to facilitate their education.

References: Atkinson, K.M., Koenka, A.C., Sanchez, C.E., Moshontz, H. and Cooper, H. 2015. Reporting standards for literature searches and report inclusion criteria: Making research syntheses more transparent and easy to replicate. Research Synthesis Methods. 6(1), pp.87–95. Dryden-Peterson, S. 2016. Refugee education in countries of first asylum: Breaking open the black box of pre-resettlement experiences. Theory and Research in Education. 14(2), pp.131–148. Peterson, A., Meehan, C., Ali, Z. and Durrant, I. 2017. What are the educational needs and experiences of asylum-seeking and refugee children, including those who are unaccompanied, with a particular focus on inclusion? Canterbury Christ Church University. Rutter, J. 2006. Refugee Children in the UK [Online]. Available from: available on an email i recived from library. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 2016. SYRIAN REFUGEE HEALTH PROFILE. , pp.15–21. Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/immigrantrefugeehealth/pdf/syrian-health-profile.pdf. UNHCR 1951. Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. [Online]. Available from: https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.23_convention refugees.pdf. UNHCR 2019. Stepping up: Refugee education in crisis [Online]. [Accessed 12 January 2021]. Available from: https://www.unhcr.org/steppingup/. United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 2021. Syria Refugee Crisis Explained. UNHCR.org. [Online]. [Accessed 1 December 2021]. Available from: https://www.unrefugees.org/news/syria-refugee-crisis-explained/.