Education Data Systems in Northwest Syria

Syria has been engulfed in a violent conflict since 2011 which has severely damaged the country’s foundations of peace, justice and development. The Northwest of Syria (henceforth NW Syria) has witnessed brutal military operations that have led to a huge toll of people killed and injured, missing, tortured and forcibly displaced. In addition to a destruction of infrastructure, there has been degradation of social relations and environment, and distortion of public institutions.

The education sector and learning process have suffered from severe damages to the drivers of learning, namely, accessibility, quality, continuity and coherence. This data systems report aims to provide in-depth insights on the current landscape of education in North West Syria, focusing on existing data systems, including information on access, quality, continuity, and identifying notable data gaps.

The study is based on key informant interviews (KIIs) with key stakeholders who have knowledge of the education data systems in NW Syria. This paper presents findings on the current education data systems and explores what types and quality of data they collect. It identifies challenges affecting the data systems from three angles, namely, context, outputs and processes, in addition to suggesting policy options.

Context: The conflict significantly disrupted Syria's education data systems, causing fragmentation, and capacity and infrastructure damage. Pre-conflict educational institutions in NW Syria became nonfunctional, and data collection ceased in many areas. In the absence of a coherent national system, multiple non-state actors (Syrian Interim Government (SiG) and Syria Salvation Government (SSG)), external actors (Turkish government), humanitarian organisations (UN agencies, international non-governmental organisations - INGOs), and local civil society organisations and initiatives (Assistance Coordination Unit – ACU, and non-governmental organisations - NGOs), have attempted to fill the gap.

The current education data systems operate in an environment where there is lack of security and conflicting priorities among the key actors. There is a lack of coordination and integration among the data systems, and further challenges linked to the dominance of short-term humanitarian approaches, and the dependency on funding from external donors.