Page 5 - IO1-Report

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

Although only about 6 percent of the world's refugee movements has been going to Europe, the EU was
challenged in the years from 2015 by an enormous influx of refugee numbers compared to the numbers
in the previous years. New or re-emerging conflicts and wars at that time, for example in Africa
(including inter alia Côte d'Ivoire, Libya, Mali and Burundi), in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq and Yemen),
but also in the Balkan region, led to a sharp increase in the number of refugees – also in the direction
of Europe (UNHCR 2019c). In several European member states the sharp rise in the number of asylum
seekers led to an administrative and infrastructure crisis, commonly referred to as the so called "refugee
crisis". (Hanewinkel/Oltmer 2018) The challenges were mainly related to medical support and
humanitarian relief as well as to social and labour market integration, education or language of refugees.

In the course of the increasing number of refugees to Europe, the number of underage refugees who
have fled their countries of origin either unaccompanied or with their families also rose: In 2015 and
2016 around thirty per cent of asylum applicants in the European Union were children (Europ.
Commission 2017b). Refugee children have often suffered extreme forms of violence, exploitation,
trafficking or abuse and are exposed to particular risks (Klemm 2016; UNHCR 2019). This is why refugee
children are particularly vulnerable and need special protection. This has been also recognized under
international and regional human rights: According to commitments, such as the “New York Declaration”
as well as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) the states have to ensure support
services to secure the child's best interests and wellbeing as well as access to education, healthcare,
psychosocial support, leisure and integration-related measures (Europ. Commission 2017b; UN 2016).

The access to formal education for refugee children therefore is one of the rights which has been
recognized under several laws and international declarations. It is furthermore significant for securing
children’s future and wellbeing. As it will be discussed below, to improve the access to education it is
important to support children on site, to reduce administrative barriers (e.g., lack of knowledge on
enrolment processes), to foster an inclusive school climate as well as to ensure that national legislation
guarantees full and equal access for all children to inclusive and quality education (UNCHR/UNICEF/IOM
2019). However, the securing of access to education in the EU depends on the member states’ individual
regulations and partly also on children’s asylum process (UNHCR/UNICEF/IOM 2019). Some member
states for example, such as Germany, set up one or two-year preparatory classes in which newly arrived
children were taught the German language before being placed in regular school classes (Gambaro et
al. 2020). In other member states, for example in Italy, current legislation does not allow the
establishment of special classes for foreign students (Aida 2020). As a result, there are different
procedures depending on the EU country, but at the same time there are also different experiences with
the schooling of children. To share these experiences, to learn from each other and to continuously
improve the school situation of refugee children in the EU there is a need for an exchange of
professionals on experiences in schools to further develop methods and projects and to support children
through the implementation additional programmes and evidence- based projects. (see Crul et al. 2016)
This is where this report steps in aiming at exchanging first experiences and perspectives on the example
of Turkey, Germany and Italy. The following report therefore analyses and reflects the situation of pupils
that have fled from war, conflicts or disasters and have newly arrived in Italy, Germany and Turkey.

Before discussing the situation of education and school of refugee children, we first would like to clarify
some definitions, which is important to avoid confusion as well as to classify terms used in this report
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