Session Information
07 SES 16 B, Educational Inclusion of Newly Arrived Migrant and Refugee Students: Towards a Holistic View
Symposium
Contribution
The whole-school approach and the horizontal inter-connectedness of schools is identified in the literature as one of the key factors ensuring inclusion and equity in education. Several recent EU-level and national strategies have highlighted the important role of non-formal learning in integrating children of migrant backgrounds (Burlacu, 2012; European Commission, 2015). This is especially important, given the fact that children spend around 85% of their active time outside school (Medrich, 1982). Cooperation between non-formal education actors and schools can therefore provide an extra dimension to traditional education practices, strengthening the capacity of schools to address the individual needs of newly arriving migrant learners (Malcolm et al, 2003; Spieß, 2016; UNESCO, 2017). Although the benefits of such cooperation upon children’s holistic development are widely recognised in literature and policy strategies, as yet no systematic approach exists in practice. Neither does there appear to be a clear understanding among many education stakeholders of the need for synergies between different types of education providers, and of the mechanisms by which such partnerships could function in a sustainable and continuous way for the benefit of all children, and migrant children in particular. Nevertheless, SIRIUS research (Lipnickienė, Siarova and van der Graaf, 2018) suggests that numerous examples of ad hoc projects and practices exist across Member States, implemented by various civil society actors and individual schools to facilitate the inclusion of migrant and refugee children into education process. This paper offers an analysis of these practices, looking into how schools and non-formal education actors can work together to create safe and inclusive offline and online learning spaces, and proposes a vision of how they can be mainstreamed and upscaled.
References
Burlacu, Alina-Gabriela (2012), The importance of non-formal education and the role of NGO’s in its promotion, Article for the 7th edition of the International Conference ‘European Integration Realities and Perspectives’ – Academic Excellence Workshop. European Commission (2015), Youth work and non-formal learning in Europe’s education landscape, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2015. Malcolm, J., Hodkinson, P., & Colley, H. (2003). The interrelationships between informal and formal learning. Journal of Workplace Learning, 15(7/8), 313–318. Medrich, E. A., Roizen, J., Rubin, V., & Buckley, S. (1982), The serious business of growing up: A study of children's lives outside school, Berkeley: University of California Press. Spieß K., Westermaier F., and Marcus J. (2016), Children and adolescents with refugee background less likely to participate in voluntary educational programs—with exception of extracurricular school activities, DIW Economic Bulletin No 34+35. Lipnickienė, K., Siarova, H. and van der Graaf, L. (2018), Role of non-formal education in migrant children inclusion: links with schools. SIRIUS Watch monitoring report, 2018. The report will be available soon at: http://www.sirius-migrationeducation.org. UNESCO (2017), Preventing violent extremism through education: A guide for policy makers, Published by UNESCO, Paris.
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