Page 27 - IO1-Report

KA201 - Strategic Partnerships for School Education
The Universal Language of Mathematics (2018-1-TR01-KA201-059704)

was intended to be realized gradually for a variety of reasons but the major one was the “inadequate
infrastructure, i.e., lack of classrooms and buildings”. For the need of education infrastructure only the
EU provided Turkey with a fund of 200 million euros (Akyuz et al. 2019). Already overcrowded schools
faced with an influx of pupils which made the need for more capacity even more urgent (HRW 2015)
so Turkey also started to work on the infrastructure problem.

Aside of the legal and infrastructural barriers in accession to education for children, there have been
significant other challenges these children were facing even if they have been able to register to schools;
language barriers, discrimination, bullying, social and cultural differences, socioeconomic insecurities
etc. There might be Turkish children who mock Syrian children for their language mistakes while trying
to speak in Turkish (HRW 2015) or they discriminate against them for other kind of social conflicts
(Akyuz et al. 2018). Also, another problem can be counted as Syrians in Turkish society are wrongly
considered as “job takers” because they are being regarded as low-cost labour thus responsible from
economic difficulties Turkish people experience (Soylu et al. 2020). Furthermore, some Turkish families
– due to prejudice or stereotypes – do not want their children to join the classrooms with Syrian children
which causes another social conflict area. Turkish families fear that the children of refugee families do
not get a good influence from their parents. So there exist many stereotypes, fears and social barriers
that hinder personal contacts between Turkish and Syrian people and finally lead to social exclusion.

The language barrier, however, is counted as the biggest challenge (HRW 2015; Taşkın & Erdemli 2018;
Akyuz et al. 2018). According to the survey done by Human Rights Watch, 8 out of 50 Syrian families
count “language” as the primary reason they do not want to send their children to school and 12 cited
language as a hardship that significantly influenced their children’s access to school. This may not cause
a problem for early grade school children but when it comes to fourth, fifth graders the learning process
becomes more challenging (HRW 2015). Language related problems also complicate the communication
of refugee children with their peers and instructors. Instead of interacting with people around them to
integrate into the society, it is more likely for them to feel isolated. Language related problems
complicate the integration process of refugee children into the Turkish education system too. Teachers
in classrooms have limited time to spare for refugee children who are not able to understand the topics
that are being covered and this situation demotivates pupils.

A Syrian mother explained their experiences by saying that his son would cry every day and that he
didn’t want to go to school. She says that they had a desperate search for language education centers
but they couldn’t find one for primary school pupils (HRW 2015). Because of the traumatic experiences
of these children they are inclined to act in a more violent way (Soylu et al. 2020) and it becomes harder
for teachers to maintain the discipline in class. But in the case of these children, for those who need
help, the opportunities vary from province and school. Another point is that Turkish teachers need
professional development to work with Syrian children, especially with the ones who have experienced
trauma and war (UNICEF 2015). Teachers in Turkey also lack the ability to deal with multicultural
classrooms with non-Turkish speaking refugee children because they are not experienced. (Akyuz,
Aksoy, Madra & Polat, 2018). Despite all these facts, in the past few years, MoNE seems to have
ameliorated the rate of registering to schools of refugee children over the years. According to UNHCR
enrolment rate of refugees in education for primary school is 61 percent worldwide (UNHCR 2018)
whereas the enrolment rate for refugees in Turkey is almost 96.3 percent (TEDMEM 2018).
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