Few Refugees in Jordan and Lebanon Get Into Secondary Education

A report released last month has confirmed what has long been suspected—that the educational pipeline in Jordan and Lebanon has collapsed. In particular, refugee youth are not flowing through secondary schools—to graduation, or up into vocational or higher education.

The report was a collaboration between the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut and the Abdulla Al Ghurair Foundation for Education, in Dubai. It reviews previous studies of the educational situation of refugees in Jordan and Lebanon, gathers data from a variety of sources, and summarizes information from original interviews of 60 key individuals familiar with refugee education in the two Levant countries.

The report, Pathways to and Beyond Education for Refugee Youth in Jordan and Lebanon, focused on secondary education, technical and vocational education, and tertiary, or university education. It widens the usual lens on the issue of refugee education to include Palestinians, many of whom have never attained citizenship rights or access to education in Jordan and Lebanon.  “A lot of their challenges are similar,” said Samar Farah, research manager at the Al Ghurair Foundation, who worked on the report. “Obviously not all of them. But a refugee remains a refugee.”