About the project

“Back on Track” offers a tailor-made experience to children and adolescents who may not have had access to school for years because of war and escape. With an advised self-learning approach, they can compensate for gaps in education and catch up with their peers. Thus the foundation for a more successful and complete education and growth is laid.

The problem

Children are the ones who suffer most from the conflict in Syria. About three million Syrian children and adolescents - either from Syria itself or from neighboring countries - do not have access to education. According to the UNHCR, only 39 percent of refugee children from Turkey, 40 percent from Lebanon, and 70 percent from Jordan attend school. ("Missing Out: Refugee Education in Crisis," UNHCR, September 2016) After five years of flight and displacement, many 12-year old children cannot read or write. Older children have some basic knowledge, but no chance to continue their education and graduate from school.

Many of the teachers-refugees themselves-teach children and adolescents through self-organized school projects in refugee camps, in order to counter the bleak outlook this young generation will have to face. This is helpful, but they are only able to reach a portion of the affected children.

In Germany, many of the recently arrived children and adolescents attend "welcome classes," but they may not have attended school for many years and therefore are not at the same education level as their peers. To then transition into a normal class is often very difficult (if not impossible), and there is a chance that the children and adolescents will fail.

The solution

The "Back on Track" project offers decentralized education that can reach a great number of those in need: children and adolescents who really want to learn are supplied with downloadable self-learning material to work with. They can work with this material on their own as far as possible or teach each other. If needed, they can also ask their friends, family, or neighbours for help. If this is not sufficient, they can receive help from our tutors on a weekly basis.

"Back on Track" mentors keep an eye on the learning process: what is the education level of this child? What does he/she have to improve in order to attend a normal class? Which self-learning materials should he/she use? Can he/she take an external exam if school attendance is not possible? What preconditions must be met for this?

In 2018, "Back on Track" will also cooperate with existing school projects for refugee children and adolescents, taking care of their education, accompanying locally working teams, and providing payment and necessary infrastructure for the school projects.

Target group: Who can learn with "Back on Track"?

The self-learning concept addresses children right from elementary school. It covers the key subjects (reading and writing in their mother tongue, maths, foreign languages or local languages, and natural sciences) beginning at an elementary level and going up to a secondary level.

The self-learning concept offers help to children and adolescents who:

• have not been able to go to school yet for any reason
• who have been traumatized by war and flight and cannot keep pace at normal school
• who are attending school again after a long time and have to close the gap with their peers

All of the refugee children had disturbing experiences, and had to witness their parents temporarily losing control of their family life. It is especially important for them to help themselves. By gaining self-development skills they experience themselves as self-sufficient and develop self-confidence.

Work with Syrian Teachers

"Back on Track" in Germany wants to support refugee children and adolescents, and help to integrate Syrian teachers and educators into the German workforce. In order to achieve this, teachers and mentors are trained and qualified in cooperation with established institutions such as the "Pädagogiche Hochschule Schwäbisch Gmünd."

From July to December 2016, we worked in an emergency shelter in Berlin-Lichtenberg with about 120 children from Syria and Iraq. Our aims in this project were to:

• find out if the method of supported self-learning is suitable for children and adolescents with a refugee background
• find out if the online material supplied by UNICEF is suitable
• train Syrian teachers, students, and academics in the method of self-organized learning

The positive response was overwhelming. 120 children and adolescents were engaged with heart and soul, whether through the level tests we employed or working with the material. It goes without saying that they enjoyed taking part in activities such as tinkering, painting, playing, and singing, which we offer to give them the opportunity to experience themselves through creative mediums.

Findings from the pilot phase

• The pedagogical staff of the emergency shelter noticed that the children were unusually relaxed - some possible reasons for this are that all of them could communicate in their mother tongue (Arabic or Kurdish), our staff knew about the social and cultural background of the children, and most of them shared the same story of being a refugee. Therefore, the children did not feel like they needed to explain themselves and the atmosphere was more relaxed.
• However, the constant fluctuation in the emergency shelter made it difficult to work continuously with the children. We could not continue working with the children who moved out of the shelter. Therefore, we decided to move to a neighborhood community center in Lichtenberg.
• Neither the parents nor the children are aware of the importance of keeping their mother tongue alive. We did not offer a subject like Arabic during the pilot phase because the parents were expressly against it. There is a lot of educational/awareness work to be done on this issue. Maintaining the mother tongue is not only a goal that can be achieved relatively easy, but one that contributes to the positive self-image of the children: they realize that it is necessary to learn a new foreign language, but at the same time they realize that they know things that other children do not know. "Back on Track" will concentrate on clarifying how important it is for children to maintain their mother tongue.
• The material provided by UNICEF is suitable, but most of the time it is not sufficiently self-explanatory. We found that especially in English, audio files are crucial because the children do not have anyone to help them to pronounce the words correctly. Apart from the UNICEF material we have been testing online material for English and maths. In the Future, we will need to produce our own material.
• Parents of children under nine years old do not think it is necessary for their children to attend our activities regularly, as they think that their children get along fine without support. This is why we decided to focus on children from the ages of nine to fifteen.
• An important precondition for the optimization and dissemination of our work is to train Syrian teachers and mentors so that they can share their knowledge with teachers in the neighbour countries of Syria and other parts of Germany. With our cooperation, the PH Schwäbisch Gmünd successfully applied for EU funding to ensure the further training of these teachers. WIthin this project we will establish a workshop and a "best practise guideline" for teachers dealing with children that had their education interrupted by war and escape. We are cooperating with projects all over Europe and in Turkey. At the same time, we are planning a hybrid training course for refugee teachers which contains German classes as well as practical work in German schools.