An impossible choice: Education or Family?

The horrendous impact of some residential schools, especially for indigenous children, are well-documented and well known (Washington Post, 21 August 2021). What is less well-understood, however, is that the legacy of this kind of residential education continues today around the world.  

At Lumos, education isn’t our core purpose: our mission is to ensure that every child grows up in a safe and loving family, rooted in their right to family life as enshrined in international law. It is, perhaps, obvious that children need to grow up in safe, loving families. They need more than basic health, nutrition and hygiene to thrive: they also need individualised, personalised nurturing care  from a trusted adult – care that institutions, by their very nature, cannot provide (Berens, A.E. & Nelson, C.A., 2015). Decades of research have shown that institutions harm children, and our experience of reforming childcare systems in many states has shown us that change is both possible and achievable (Dozier, M., et al., 2014; Mulheir, G., 2012; van IJzendoorn, M.H., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M.J., Duschinsky, R. et al., 2020).

Our focus on residential education has emerged from those years of experience, and that of our partner organisations. Across the contexts where we work, we see time and again the intersection of education and institutionalisation that causes children to be separated from their families.  

In 2020, we therefore commenced a Global Thematic Review on the links between education and institutionalisation, and we are pleased to be able to share some of our findings with INEE members in this blog.b

What kinds of education are we talking about? 

It can be hard to define the parameters of residential education: in many contexts, residential education settings are the responsibility of ministries of education rather than the social care or child protection sectors and – partly because of this - aren't always perceived as institutions in the traditional sense (like orphanages and children’s homes). There are lots of terms for residential education settings, dependent on national and local context, including ‘residential schools’, ‘boarding schools’ and ‘school residences’.  Despite this, they can share many of the same institutional characteristics as residential care settings, for example by isolating children from their families and effectively taking over their children’s care. By definition, most residential education settings provide both education and care, despite often only being regulated and licensed as one or the other. We believe that if institutional characteristics are present, a residential education setting can be defined as an institution.    

Lumos, and many other organisations, define institutions by focusing on whether an institution has institutional culture of characteristics, rather than the type of service it provides or the sector it sits within. These characteristics include:   

• depersonalization (lacking personal possessions and signs and symbols of individuality and humanity)  
• rigid routines which override individual children’s needs and preferences  
• a lack of individualised support or prioritisation of children’s individualised needs   
• children’s lack of control over their lives and decisions affecting them  
• the isolation of children from families and communities. 

What drives children into residential education? 

Some of our key findings included: 

• Children are admitted to residential services to access education and opportunities that may not otherwise be available: in some cases, residential education is the only option available for families, for example in rural and remote communities.  
• The role of poverty and other socio-economic issues: Poverty was identified as a key driver for children entering residential education, with residential education facilities providing much more than just education to children. In some contexts, education is seen as being a ‘way out’ of poverty for children, or as an ‘act of charity’ for which families are expected to be grateful.  
• The lack of non-residential, inclusive education for children with disabilities: For many families of children with disabilities, the choice is residential education or no education at all. During our outreach and engagement on this research, one government official told us: “We used to believe that children with disabilities didn’t have the skills needed to attend mainstream schools. Now, we know that it was us who didn’t have the skills to educate them.”   
• Discrimination against marginalised and disadvantaged communities: In some contexts, State authorities allow or justify the placement of children into residential education in a way which disproportionately affects certain groups of children. This includes children in street situations, children from indigenous, First Nations and tribal communities, Roma, Sinti and children from other traveller backgrounds, and other racial, religious, linguistic and cultural minorities.  

What impact does this have on children? 

The research identified a range of impacts, including: 

• While residential education certainly enables many children to access their right to education, some children in residential education are, in fact, not accessing education at all. In one institution examined, 46% of children – all of whom had a learning disability – were not receiving education of any kind.
• A sense of dislocation from children’s families and home communities separates many children from their ethnic, cultural, religious and other identities.  This can adversely impact their sense of identity, emotional development and mental health.
• The dominance of the medical model of disability in residential education facilities for children with disabilities, which typically focuses on children’s impairments, was found to undermine children’s learning potential. 
• Many children in residential education have extreme difficulties adjusting to the environment in which they find themselves, including experiencing issues with feeling a sense of belonging, challenges adapting to an environment far outside the culture or environment they are used to, and ‘academic alienation’ if their learning is impeded: all of these are of course exacerbated for very young children, especially pre-primary and primary aged children. 
• Children in residential education experience a heightened risk of bullying, child labour, physical, verbal and sexual abuse. Unsurprisingly, children exposed to abuse of any kind also experienced significant detrimental impacts on their educational outcomes. Children who do experience abuse are less likely than children not in residential education to report it, as they are frequently cut off from the outside world and separated from the trusted adults in their lives. 

Key recommendations 

Our research makes a series of recommendations to different actors, but we’d like to especially highlight the following: 

• Local and national governments should phase out the use of residential education where it meets the definition of an institution, ensuring high-quality, community-based, non-residential education and other key services are available and accessible to all children. As long as residential education facilities remain open, governments should ensure that they are regulated as providers of both education and child care (irrespective of the school’s status or nature), with both subject to the same standards and inspection protocols. 
• Local and national governments should prioritise the development of non-residential inclusive education services. Ensure that teachers and staff in mainstream schools receive the training and resources they need to meaningfully include children with disabilities, making sure enough funding is allocated to this to guarantee its sustainability.   

We hope you, like us, can see that education and family are mutually reinforcing, and should never be pitted against each other. Our Learning Curves pack includes the Global Thematic Review on education and institutional care, four case studies (Moldova, EU, Colombia, Indonesia), policy briefs, and event recordings: please read it and share with your colleagues!  

We would love to discuss the issues this research raises in more detail, or answer any questions, please contact [email protected]

Lucy Halton is Advocacy & Campaigns Manager at Lumos, where she leads the organisation’s work on Education and on the flow of funding into institutional care. Lucy is a child rights advocacy specialist, with an MA in Human Rights Law from SOAS, University of London, who has previously worked for organisations including the Quaker United Nations Office in Geneva, and the Consortium for Street Children. 

The views expressed in this blog are the authors' own.