Page 36 - IO1-Report

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

3.4.3. School Adaptation of Refugee Students

Adaptation to school life is a key achievement in integration of students into education system. Its basic
two ingredients are sense of safety in school and belief to be successful in education. Table-10 reports
the replies of students about their sense of safety in school. The vast majority of Turkish students feel
safe in school and only 13% of Turkish girls and 15% Turkish boys are devoid of safety feeling. In terms
of safety, there is no statistically significant difference between Turkish boys and girls. However, the
difference between refugee girls and boys is statistically significant: the percentage of RS boys who do
not feel safe (33%) is higher than the ratio of RS girls (22%). Contrary to general wisdom, refugee boys
need more support to feel themselves safe in school.

When RS are compared with Turkish students, it is revealed that their sense of safety is lower. 85% of
Turkish boys feel safe in school but this percentage is just 64% among RS boys. The fraction of RS boys
who are lack of sense of safety is 33% which is more than two times higher than the percentage of
Turkish boys (15%). Although it is less severe, this fact is valid for RS girls. Relative to Turkish girls,
less fraction of RS girls feel safe in school and hence, more fraction of RS girls are devoid of safety
feeling.

Therefore, the figures indicate that RS require special attention. Firstly, all daily training/education
routines, methodologies, materials, applications, must be reviewed to check for possible risk of
damaging safety feeling of RS. Second, new methods, materials, applications, policies and programs
dedicated to support the students’ sense of safety must be generated.

Refugee Students Turkish Students

Girls Boys Girls Boys

Do you feel Yes 75% > 64% 87% ≈ 85%
safe No 22% < 33% 13% ≈ 15%
in school? No reply 3% ≈ 3% - -

Table – 10: Safety feeling of students.
(Note: The sign ≈ means that the difference is not statistically significant.)

The second basic ingredient of school adaption is the belief that students will be successful in school
education. Table-11 presents the fraction of both refugee and Turkish students who believe that he/she
will be successful. Almost 80% of RS think that they can be successful in Turkish Education System
(TES). Thus, the situation is promising in terms of school adaptation of RS. But improvement is still
needed. Because the percentage of RS who think that they are going to fail is much higher than the
percentage of Turkish students.

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