Prioritise embedding AE in national systems, institutions and budgets. Given the high number of out-of-school children and youth in many conflict-affected contexts, coupled with recurring displacement, school closures and delays in completing primary and secondary education, there is demonstrated evidence that AE offers a tangible way (for girls in particular) to complete their education.   

Integrating AE into teacher training Teachers and other education personnel should receive continuous support to ensure learning, pedagogy and materials are differentiated and support different learners' needs. Any comprehensive ALP training should be conflict-sensitive. For example,  in areas with language, ethnic and religious diversity, it is essential that culturally, socially, and linguistically relevant curricula are used. In multilingual settings, community-informed decisions will need to be made on the most appropriate primary language of instruction for the lower levels of ALP.

Institutional coordination and partnerships are critical to ensure AE programmes are harmonised and standardised. Ministries should seek to establish AE task teams or working groups in conjunction with broader education stakeholders.  

For the interim, multi-year funding for AEP is needed, alongside partnership approaches that advocate for AE to transition to being funded directly by the national Government. This would increase sustainability and reduce dependency on educational aid. However, given the scale of learners in need of AE, multi-year funding is needed for the interim.  As in most contexts, it takes between three to four years for a learner to complete an entire primary AE cycle and, on average, two to three years for a learner to complete secondary AE. It is important to consider that funding cycles do not necessarily correlate with the traditional school calendar, and this needs to be considered.

Fund Research and evidence to determine what works and where learners transition to.  Given the high level of investment in AE programmes, more evidence is critically needed to find out the number of learners enrolled nationally and what is working. In addition, donors should encourage research that empowers children, young people, and communities. Whilst there has been a rise in reading and writing assessments in AEP in recent years, there is little qualitative data to unpack the challenges and success that children, teachers, and their families encounter when navigating AEPs. AEP aims to support the most marginalised learn

ers, however, implementers will lack the knowledge to make sound decisions about the most effective programmes to invest scarce time and resources without improved monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning practices and longitudinal research. As this report has highlighted, education inequity is a huge issue and disaggregated transition rates and tracer studies of students who have returned to the formal primary or secondary education system. Data and evidence could provide critical insight into what is working for different learner groups participating in AEP, teachers, communities and in different locations.

An Equity-Centred approach to AEP is drastically needed. This would entail gender-responsive approaches to education design, looking into the specific barriers that boys and girls face in AEP and seeking to address the issues, in addition to more comprehensive markers that can lead to exclusion from AE. For example, many AE learners are parents or caregivers. Creating a daycare unit with a caretaker for the babies would enable them to concentrate on their studies without disruptions. 

Language bridging programmes are needed to ensure that the multilingual, multi-ethnic AEP cohorts have the language skills necessary to complete the AEP curriculum. AEP partners should conduct language mapping to determine the home languages represented within AEP centres and seek to recruit teachers and assistants who can support and nurture a multilingual classroom environment.  In particular, there is a need for a language bridging programme for secondary AEP learners who were previously taught in another language. Without additional language support and intentional instruction, learners' educational trajectories are delayed even longer as they seek to gain fluency in English.

Parental and caregiver engagement is vital. Covid-19 has highlighted the critical role that parents, caregivers and the wider community play to keep students learning. Implementing partners should work with schools to enhance PTA/SMC roles and responsibilities, providing training and sharing examples of best practices. Through engagement with community elders, women's groups, and key community influencers from the different displaced ethnic groups, agencies will understand the norms and values placed around girls' and boys' participation in education, resulting in more effective, participatory, and accountable responses  

•With the support from Humanitarian Education Accelerator and Porticus, CWTL continues the development of a gamified learning outcomes assessment tool.

COUNTRY UPDATES

•More than 5000 children continued their education through CWTL despite the harsh economic conditions.

•With the reopening of schools many refugee children are back to non-formal education centres using the CWTL programme for basic literacy & numeracy.

•Facilitators, caregivers and children were supported with materials and tools needed to deliver quality education for the CWTL programme. A new package for distance learning was created for CWTL to support facilitators.

Uganda

•Schools in Uganda remained closed, but the CWTL programme is continuing in children’s homes and communities. This includes Uganda host communities as well as refugee populations in AEPs. 

Chad

•CWTL continues its implementation of French maths and Arabic maths for Chadian host communities and Sudanese refugees in the eastern part of the country. New tablets have arrived and the team is preparing to increase the enrolment to approximately 1300 children per school year.

•CWTL is implemented in non-formal settings using the original tablet methodology as well as ‘’digital lessons’’ via whatsapp for home learning.  

•CWTL is expanding to South Sudan with a pilot launch in Malakal with World Vision. The pilot will be with 300 children using the Uganda games which were co-created with South Sudanese refugees.

•The high number of targeted beneficiaries and the restrictive funding to reach more children results in the provision of one cycle (one grade level ) of accelerated learning. In general, OOS children need more than one cycle of AEP to recover the missed years of learning. (every cycle is 4 months equivalent to one semester of an academic year).

•When education activities were suspended due to a rise in Covid-19 cases, learning activities continued online for some, while other groups with no access to internet waited until the attendance resumed. Suspensions did not exceed two weeks in a row.
 

•Children across NWS and NES received remedial education.  The learning gaps among children are very restrictive in the acquisition of learning especially for the higher primary classes mainly G4-G6.

•A guided self-learning program was provided to children who have no access to a school/learning space facility.

•Process: Teachers created instruction sheets and shared these with students. For families who had internet availability, documents were shared online and support via the WhatsApp groups was available. For families without internet or mobile phones, weekly study packs (now one-time printed textbooks) were distributed and recollected a week later. 

•Experience: In this modality, one teacher was able to support more children than usual. New parents were reticent at first but with support from teachers, they overcame the challenges. 

•A group of teenaged girls in NES had no access to learning due to gender issues, followed guided SLP for 9 months. Guided SLP provided by female teachers encouraged the parents to allow their girls to join an all-girls-school AEP. 

•A community based self-learning program in NES was piloted to provide children (in informal settlements) who have no access to a school/learning space facility with learning. It is based on children's self-learning with the support of the community.

•Process: Awareness raising and introduction about the program was shared with the settlement community. Children's academic levels were determined by a placement test. Children received textbooks for their class level. Teachers assigned weekly lessons to be covered, family/community members were encouraged to attend. Weekly support was given first two weeks and spaced out with time to bi-monthly and then monthly. During the lockdown children did not learn on their own.