Promoting early childhood education for Syrian and Turkish children

Context

Since 2011, the civil war in Syria has been generating an extraordinary flow of refugees. Turkey is currently providing temporary protection for more than 3.6 million displaced Syrians. Almost all of them live in local communities outside the refugee camps, and more than 500,000 Syrian children have already been born in Turkey.

Despite considerable effort, Turkey still faces major challenges with integrating the Syrian children into the education system at an early stage and guaranteeing a pre-school place for everyone. There are too few public educational institutions, and those that do exist are frequently unable to provide high-quality education and services. Many Syrian and poor Turkish families cannot afford private early childhood education services.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the earthquake in February 2023 made the situation even worse.

Objective

Early childhood education for Syrian and disadvantaged Turkish children aged three to six years is improved.

Approach

The project implements a comprehensive capacity building strategy. This involves the following measures:

The project equips pre-schools and public education centres with appropriate teaching and learning materials.

It offers training courses for pre-school teachers, headteachers and specialist personnel in educational administration. The training courses focus on the joint teaching of Syrian and Turkish children in mixed classes. There is also an exchange programme for experts from the Ministry of Education with specialist institutions in Germany.

The project supports Syrian and Turkish families with raising their children in a way that supports their development. To this end, it promotes parental involvement at pre-schools. A bilingual (Turkish/Arabic) smartphone app has also been developed.

Since the earthquake, the focus has been on reopening pre-schools in the earthquake zone and implementing compensatory measures for children who were affected by the earthquake.

Last update: June 2023