Development of a tailored educational strategy in primary schools to cope with volatility of education in internally displaced camps: a case study from Northwest Syria

ABSTRACT

As the Syrian situation has worsened since 2011, many aspects of the society have been affected, most notably the education of children. The internally displaced persons (IDPs) camps in Northwest Syria, especially in rural areas, are left with limited access to education for children, resulting in all the consequences that follow. Abjad initiative for education established Iqraa project to deliver education in those areas and adapted a modified educational strategy that differs from known conventional schooling in the region. The modified strategy is based on attendance, in class behaviour and performance in weekly formative assessments and linked it to final exam scores. Among fourth grade students (N = 35), the study showed strong positive statistically significant correlation between these parameters and final exam (0.780***, 0.893*** and 0.961*** respectively). Low performance on any of these parameters allowed to flag and refer students that need support to special assistant and safeguarding teachers. The study explored the relationship of these parameters to social factors through a survey done with families and revealed an important role of parents’ education, number of people sharing the tent and distance from classroom tent on children’s attendance and attainment. Regarding challenges that have been reported by parents, it has only been found that the distance from the classroom tent is statistically significant with the children’s attendance (p = 0.042*). Negatively significant correlations were found between the children’s behaviour within the classroom and final exam scores with the number of people sharing their tent (r = - 0.459, r = - 0.524) respectively. The proposed strategy can be replicated in many emergency areas. Furthermore, findings of this study can be further explored by policy makers, funders, and social experts to better understand the impact of long-term IDP settlement in camps on children’s education and development.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Attendance
• formative assessment
• behaviour
• children education
• refugee camps
• Northwest Syria

1. Introduction

1.1. The Syrian crisis and its impact on children education among internally displaced persons (IDPs)

In 2011, the Syrian crisis started with extensive involvement of military actions that shoved millions of Syrians outside their homes. Consequently, 6.9 million (3 million children) have been internally displaced (Humanitarian Action for Children, 2022), 19% of whom live in camps including informal settlements (Center for Operational Analysis and Research, 2022). Unfortunately, internal forced displacement to Northwest Syria (NWS) did not rescue families from continuous military attacks and limited security. The infrastructure in the region didn’t enable safe replacement housing, but instead many were left in temporary tents in refugee camps. These camps were randomly established in rural areas far from major cities and large villages. Furthermore, many of those places were not supported with medical, social, and educational facilities and were left abandoned throughout the last decade.

Children in conflict-affected countries are at greater risk of dropping out of school, and only 65% complete primary school compared to 86% in low-income countries (Hawke, 2015). In Syria, the number of school-aged children that are out of school is 2.4 million; furthermore, 1.6 million are at risk of dropping out (UNCEF, 2023). In addition, the complex political situation in Syria has resulted in an unstandardized fragmented education system that differs based on the political powers and particularities of each region. Hence, challenges and needs differ accordingly (Qaddour & Husain, 2022). Children in NWS face more risks than other regions, these risks include attacks on schools, child recruitment and labour (Qaddour & Husain, 2022). The economic crisis also increases the likelihood of children dropping out of school to support their families and increase the risk of child marriage (Bradbury, 2020; Qaddour & Husain, 2022). The earthquake has also exacerbated the challenges faced by children in NWS and it has put more than 1 million school-aged children at risk of being out of school. The earthquake has also damaged 452 primary and secondary schools (Quazi et al., 2023).

Therefore, children of displaced families found themselves victims of a crisis that removed them from schooling, adversely affected their families’ income and established barriers for accessing education. Child labour, trauma, stress, depression, and many other side effects were reported in NWS and initiatives started to tackle some of those through international funding (Raslan et al., 2021). However, these social challenges are further complicated in rural refugee camps where no such support can be given, no nearby school is available and limited parents awareness of long-term absenteeism from school has impact on children development. The impact of conflict is also more visible in internally displaced persons (IDPs) populations as Jackie Kirk says, ‘ … in many ways the situation for IDP children may be more complex than that for refugee children, and access to education even more difficult’ (Kirk et al., 2009; UNESCO, 2018).

The aim here is create an educational initiative that tackles some of the issues associated with children education among IDPs. The initiative should not only provide conventional education but also seek innovative ways to be able to flag children suffering from labour, trauma, stress, and depression so support can be given using school as a starting point.

1.2. Abjad initiative for education initiative for education: Iqraa project for children education in rural areas

In 2018, Abjad initiative for education started Iqraa project, Iqraa in Arabic means to Read. The project was funded through community-based support from wealthier Syrians inside and outside Syria to provide schooling in neglected rural refugee camps in NWS. The project established teaching and learning tents in several camps in the region, recruited staff, provided training and equipment to deliver teaching to children aged 6–12 years old to cover for primary education grades 1–5 (Table 1). The project expanded the number of service users and reduced it depending on available funding, all opened or closed centres were picked through discussion and complete agreement with local educational authorities, and locations were selected where authorities had no power to provide education.

Table 1. Key facts and details of Iqraa educational project targeting children between 6 and 12 in refugee camps in NWS from 2019 (old teaching strategy till August 2021 (updated teaching strategy)

	Older teaching strategy Conventional schooling		Updated teaching strategy with three follow up parameters
Academic year	2019–2020	2020–2021	2021–2022
Number of students	326	368	273
School infrastructure
Centres	3	4	2
Educational grades	3	3	5
Total active classes	6	8	9
Curriculum
Educational hours	4018	3951	2640
Curriculum	UNCEF	UNCEF	Local education authority
Staff
Teaching staff	17	19	14
Administration staff	10	6	6

1.3. Adoption of novel educational strategy that can flag children in need

Considering the sharing and collection of data about education in Syria, it is inadequate, of poor quality, and inconsistent for build-up of well-informed plans for education and humanitarian response (Qaddour & Husain, 2022). In practice, enumerators collect data in northern Syria camps face a lot of obstacles due to difficult roads, long travel distances, and restrictions on accessing schools (Assistance, & Coordination Unit/Information Management Un, 2022). Consequently, few studies have been conducted on education strategy in IDP camps. Most literature on this topic is concerned with the political, economic, and social situation in camps (Calabria et al., 2022; Mushtaha & Dilsiz, 2022; Thibos, 2014), but does not describe specific strategies adopted by local actors that could provide insight into more effective educational programming.

In Iqraa project, conventional education was delivered to children up to 2021. In conventional education, no follow-up or flagging was done for children, making issues such as partial or continuous absenteeism due to child labour or forced marriage, aggressive behaviours due to trauma, and isolation due to depression go unnoticed and left to exacerbate. Until an updated strategy was proposed to amend the conventional teaching with new parameters of follow-up to match the current situation in camps. The new strategy was built on three parameters: attendance, behaviour, and performance in continuous formative assessments at school (Figure 1). These parameters were designed to flag children in need of support and were linked to two newly established teachers’ titles: special assistance and safeguarding teachers who intervene with children based on low scoring in one or more of these parameters through the full academic year of 2021–2022. The collected data is of huge importance for multiple reasons, first, it adds to the little literature available around the situation in NWS. Second, it examines the hypothesis of using education as a starting point for identification of children’s needs and third becoming a link between children’s parents and local stakeholders to solve some of those needs. However, the new strategy has yet to prove its ability to disclose academic performance which can be an output of successful education and need intervention.

Figure 1. A schematic representation of the chronological order of implementation of the continuous follow up parameters in the updated teaching strategy after August 2021.

Therefore, the aim of this paper is to inform effective strategies for education in IDPs camps through testing the linkage of the three parameters (listed below) to academic achievement of children. Furthermore, it aims to investigate the three parameters interaction with other social factors like gender, parents’ education, etc., using data extracted from a survey conducted by the initiative staff with families in February 2022. Due to limited resources, this research is a pilot study that focuses on fourth grade students (N = 35). The goals of this article are:

1. To test the linkage hypothesis of attendance, in class behaviour and formative assessments performance to final exam performance and social factors including children gender, parents’ education, number of people sharing tent and number of father’s wives.

2. To understand parents’ perception on the impact of Abjad initiative for education on their children especially after the new strategy was established.

3. To provide a case study for other NGOs and educational authorities working in a similar context on a possible and successful follow-up education strategy that can be used during humanitarian emergencies and in fragile contexts.

2. Methodology

2.1. Educational context

Abjad initiative for education, a non-governmental organisation registered in Germany, has projects inside and outside Germany to support Syrians worldwide with education development. The initiative established primary schools in IDPs camps in rural areas of Idlib, NWS. The project is run by 14 teachers and 6 administration staff. The school delivers primary education form age 6 to 12. In August 2021, the initiative updated its teaching strategy to cope with the volatility of the situation in IDPs refugee camps and moved away from conventional teaching by the introduction of several continuous follow up parameters and linked those parameters to newly created teaching positions called safeguarding and special assistance teachers (Figure 1).

The initiative introduced three follow up parameters: children attendance, behaviour, and performance in continuous formative assessment at school. The first parameter was adopted following the instability in the region and other social factors including child labour, displacement, and disability. A child’s poor attendance acts as a guide to the safeguarding teacher, who contacts parents and investigates the causes of the child absence and explores ways to support child return to education. The daily attendance records were then used in correlation study with academic attainment.

The second parameter was developed as a weekly tool used by the classroom teacher to reflect on students’ behaviour. Criteria was set around child engagement in classroom, isolation, aggressive reactions and other social indicators like clothes and body cleanness. Concerned students were then contacted by either the safeguarding or special assistance teachers depending on circumstances. Students’ behaviour followed a 1–10 scale and were used in correlation study with academic attainment.

The third parameter was designed as short one-minute, one-question weekly checkpoint at the end of a randomly selected class. The checkpoint was designed in a way that all taught subjects are checked at least once a month. The checkpoint aimed to test children focus within the same class by examining short memory retainment of information. Poor performance in those checkpoints was then further investigated by the safeguarding or special assistance teachers to explore personal or social roots of the issue.

2.2. Data collection

2.2.1. Educational data collection

The three continuous follow up parameters were collected by the initiative staff during the academic year from August 2021 until May 2022. Children attendance and behaviour data were collected by classroom teachers. Continuous formative checkpoints were co-designed by classroom teachers and the educational department. The academic year is divided into two semesters with two official exams within each semester. Final exam score was calculated through taking the sum of all individual exams. At the end of the year, data arrangement and coding were done by the educational department manager. The data were shared with other researchers to perform correlation studies after anonymisation.

2.2.2. Social data collection

During the two-week winter break in February 2022, a survey was created by the educational department and was circulated to the parents of the children enrolled in the project. Two members of staff visited families of children in their tents within the camp and helped parents fill out the survey. In each group there was a female and male staff to accommodate the cultural needs of the parents. The survey contained demographic questions about parents, children and their families, parents’ perception on different aspects related to their children education and their relationship to the initiative. The survey was created using KoboToolbox software to enable the collection of data offline due to the nature of the displacement camps and absence of stable internet connection (Collecting Data Offline — KoboToolbox Documentation, n.d.). As a proof of concept, the correlation studies between survey data and continuous follow up parameters were done only on fourth grade students (N = 35). This cohort of students was primarily selected due to its age of 10–12, where those children are at the age of forced work, puberty, and longer displacement periods with higher numbers of missed schooling years.

2.3. Study participants

Using the total sample size 273 (Table 1) and aiming for over 85% response rate from parents with 90% confidence interval and a margin of error at 10%; the sample size is (N = 31) by using Raosoft calculator (Seattle, U.S.A.: Raosoft, I, 2004). The updated teaching strategy was applied to 35 fourth grade children (18 males and 17 females) enrolled in at the fourth grade of their primary school in camps. Thirty-two (16 males and 16 females) of those children’s families were interviewed and completed the survey in section 2.2. Given this small sample size of 35, the power was calculated by G*Power software with α = 0.05, large effect size, and in a two-tailed setting, the power is about 0.91 (Erdfelder et al., 1996; Lakens, 2022).

2.4. Statistical analysis

Pearson correlation coefficient was used for normally distributed parameterised data such as attendance, behaviour and exam marks. Independent t-test was used to compare scores with gender and other categorical data. Kruskal-Wallis Test was used to draw correlation between continuous parametrised and categorical data. Descriptive statistics was used for Likert scale and yes/no survey questions. Cronbach’s alpha was measured for both the educational and social data collected respectively. Results were presented as a statistically significant if p value is < 0.05*, 0.01** and 0.005***.

2.5. Data storage and accessibility

All the data was anonymised before the analysis by the educational department manager and authors didn’t have access to students’ personal information. The data was stored on an encrypted password-accessible cloud drive available through the Microsoft Office Pack (Microsoft, U.S.A.) of the initiative.

3. Results

3.1. The relationship between children attendance and educational and social parameters

On the educational side, children attendance has been monitored daily throughout the year. Pearson coefficients showed high correlation values between attendance and behaviour within classroom and final exam score (0.933 and 0.78 respectively). Both values were statistically significant p < 0.001 (Table 2).

Table 2. The relationship between children attendance at school, behaviour within classroom and performance in continuous formative assessment with educational parameters

Educational parameters (N=35)
Pearson Correlation coefficient Eta Squared Cohen’s d	children attendance at school	behaviour within classroom	children performance in continuous formative assessment	final exam score
children attendance at school		0.930***	0.727***	0.780***
behaviour within classroom			0.931***	0.893***
children performance in continuous formative assessment				0.961***

T-test showed no significant difference between males and females’ attendance at school (p = 0.297) (supplementary table S1). Higher attendance was observed with children of more educated parents (mother and father), but that was not statistically significant (supplementary table S1).

3.2. Children performance in continuous formative assessment relationship to different educational and social parameters

Children performance in continuous formative assessment showed high Pearson correlation coefficients (R value > 0.7) with behaviour and attendance. There was a strong correlation between performance in continuous formative assessment and final exam score (R value = 0.961). All these data were statistically significant with a p < 0.001 (Table 2). All correlation data are above the minimum required p value to validate H1, thus validating the hypothesis that attendance in class, behaviour and formative assessments performance are linked to each other’s and are linked to final exam performance (section 2.3).

Cronbach’s alpha for the four educational parameters children attendance, behaviour, and performance in continuous formative assessment and final exam was 0.89 indicating a good reliability.

On the social side, gender seemed to be irrelevant with respect to children performance in continuous formative assessment (p = 0.619). Higher level of father and mother education showed higher children performance in continuous formative assessment. However, these data were not statistically significant with a p > 0.05 (supplementary table S1).

3.3. Social parameters relationship to educational parameters

Children behaviour within classroom and their final exam scores were assessed in relation to gender, parents’ education, Number of people sharing tent and Number of father’s wives in Table 3. Both educational parameters were not statistically affected by gender with (p > 0.05). Mother’s education seemed to have higher statistical but insignificant impact on children behaviour within classroom compared to their final exam scores (p value = 0.095 vs. 0.123). The mean ranks were (16.3, 13.6 and 27.5) and (15.1, 16.0 and 29.5) with uneducated, primary, and secondary educated mothers for behaviour and final exam score respectively. On the other side, father’s education seemed to have higher statistical but insignificant impact on children final exam scores compared to their behaviour within classroom (p value = 0.436 vs. 0.089). The mean ranks were (9, 16.3, 17.5 and 18.8) and (8.2, 17.7, 25.0 and 22.5) with uneducated, primary, secondary and university educated fathers for behaviour and final exam score respectively.

Table 3. The relationship between children behaviour within classroom and the final exam mark with social parameters

N = 32	Gender Independent Samples T Test	Parents’ education Kruskal-Wallis Test	Number of people sharing tent Pearson Correlation coefficient	Number of father’s wives Pearson Correlation coefficient
Children behaviour within classroom	Female 19 ± 8%	Mother education χ^2(2) = 4.716, p = 0.095	− 0.459*	−0.119
	Male 20 ± 6%	Father education χ^2(2) = 2.722, p = 0.436	P = 0.011	0.531
	P = 0.270
Final exam scores	Female 50 ± 32%	Mother education χ^2(2) = 4.185, p = 0.123	− 0.524***	−0.214
	Male 55 ± 31%	Father education χ^2(2) = 6.510, p = 0.089	P = 0.001	0.239
	P = 0.652

Negative correlation coefficients were found between children behaviour and final exam score with the number of people living with them in the same tent. The coefficients were around (−0.45) and were statistically significant. Again, negative but lower and not statistically significant corelations were found between children behaviour/final exam score and the number of father’s wives (Table 3). The p values are below 0.56 and thus children behaviour/final exam score relationship to key social parameters hypothesis cannot be validated on this sample size.

3.4. Parents perception of the role of in camp school on children development

Parents perception around their communication with the Initiative and its educational impact are presented in Table 4. Parents perceptions were highly positive between agree and strongly agree (mean 4.5, mode 5) in terms of the ease of communication with the staff indicating a good relationship between education providers and families of service users. Majority of families noticed the change in our education strategy after August 2021 (mean 1, mode 1) which further supports the perception of good communication between staff and parents. Parents were generally aware of the newly introduced teacher positions (safeguarding and special assistance) with a mode of 1 and disagreed with special assistance teacher ineffectiveness (mode 2). Finally, they strongly agreed that the new strategy is more effective than the old one (mode 5).

Table 4. Parents’ perception of Part A) interaction with the initiative staff, B) Understanding of the updated teaching strategy C) Impact of the initiative education on children and D) Challenges associated with children education at the initiative. Questions were either Likert scale with 5 for strongly agree, 4 for agree, 3 for neutral, 2 for disagree and 1 for strongly disagree. Affirmative questions were answered either by 1, Yes or 0 No and were donated with a * at the end of the question. Challenges were summed by number of ticks by parents and order from highest to lowest

Question	Mean ± STD Mode
Parents communication with staff
It is easy to contact the initiative staff when I have issue with my children education	4.5 ± 0.6
	5
We are always well informed with updates and changes in the initiative education	4.3 ± 1.0
	5
Initiative staff positively receive our questions	4.5 ± 0.7
	5
We fell part of the initiative community	4.5 ± 0.7
	5
Parents awareness of the initiative new teaching strategy
Did you notice any change in the teaching strategy in the initiative after August 2021*	1.0 ± 0.2
	1
Are you aware of the role of safeguarding teacher*	0.6 ± 0.5
	1
Are you aware of the role of special assistance teacher*	0.7 ± 0.5
	1
Special support teacher doesn’t effectively support children	1.8 ± 0.9
	2
The new teaching strategy is more effective than the old one	4.5 ± 0.6
	5
Parents’ perception of the initiative education impact on children
Has positive impact on my child behaviour	4.5 ± 0.7
	5
Made my child more confident	4.5 ± 0.5
	5
Helped my child to be more responsible and independent	4.4 ± 0.7
	5
Taught my child new skills	4.4 ± 0.6
	4
Did not improve my child learning capabilities	2.0 ± 1
	2
Parents challenges associated with their children education at the initiative
I face multiple challenges in my experience with the initiative	2.3 ± 1.2
	2
Perception of challenges faced by children	Distance from classroom tent	14
	Learning difficulties	12
	Female child safety	5
	Children working	4
	Children having other caring duties	2
Perception of challenges faced by parents themselves	Busy schedule	12
	Difficulty supporting child learning.	10
	Ambiguity of taught curriculum	3

In terms of the parent’s perception on the initiative education impact on children (Table 4), parents strongly agreed that the impact was positive, helped build children confidence, responsibility, and independence (average >4.4, mode 5). They also agreed that education at the initiative taught their children new skills (average 4.4, mode 4) and disagreed with the following statement ‘This educational initiative did not improve my child learning capabilities’ (average 2.0, mode 2).

With respect to challenges associated with the children learning, parents focused more on challenges faced by children and parents themselves rather than due to their relationship with the initiative (Table 4). The major challenges faced by children were around distance from the educational tent and personal learning difficulties (over 10 ticks). On the parents’ side, their busy schedule, and difficulty supporting child learning were the main challenges they face (over 10 ticks)

Cronbach’s alpha for parents communication with staff (4 items) and perception of the initiative education impact on children (4 Likert items) data were 0.84 and 0.85 respectively indicating good reliability.

3.5. Parents reported challenges and their impact on children achievement

The understanding of the real impact of the challenges mentioned by parents in their perception questionnaire on the updated strategy educational parameters alongside exam scores was tested in Supplementary table S2. The only statistically significant challenge was distance from educational tent and children attendance (p = 0.042*), where children of parents reporting the issue had a lower average attendance compared to their non-reporting peers.

4. Discussion

Absence of education has prolonged impact on social stability especially when children are not accessing schools for several years, this mainly happens in areas under crisis and emergency. Abjad initiative for education established a project to deliver education in refugee camps with a modified teaching strategy that accommodates the volatile situation with built-in educational parameters that can be used to identify poor children learning, or flag children that might be affected by social factors limiting their academic performance.

4.1. Attendance

In conventional situations, children attendance to primary schools is taken for granted and subject to laws of compulsory education imposed by many countries (Seitzer et al., 2022). In the developed world, scholar achievements have been linked to attendance, for example statistically significant negative association between non-attendance and national numeracy and reading scores was observed in year 5 of primary schools in Australia (Daraganova et al., 2014). However, in emergency areas, children attendance to school is not certain and can be a crucial parameter to be followed and linked to poor scholar achievement. In our study, higher attendance rates meant higher chances for children engagement with the learning content and higher attention chances within classroom as can be seen from its statistically significant correlation coefficient to performance in final exam (0.780) and continuous formative assessment (0.727) (Table 2). Similar positive correlation (R = 0.365) between school attendance and academic performance in universal primary schools in Uganda was observed (Sekiwu et al., 2020). Attendance to school proves to be essential for good scholar achievement at this young age, where proximal process and interaction with teacher and peers promote the bioecological model of human development (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2007; Rucinski et al., 2018). A statistically significant correlation coefficient of 0.933 was found between attending school and well behaviour within classroom (Table 2). Knowing that behaviour within classroom is a weekly parameter covering a full week while attendance at school is a daily parameter (Figure 1), children with more attendance are more aware of the good classroom behaviour and developed better integration with classroom activities than children with lower attendance rates (Rucinski et al., 2018). Positively, children attendance at school was not affected by gender and parents’ education in a statistically significant fashion, however, higher rates were observed with males over females and higher levels of parent’s education (Supplementary table S1). Even though not statistically significant, the difference rates of attendance in the fourth grade between males and females and its relationship to parent’s education might explain limited female access to education in later years and be root cause for the discontinuation of education for children of uneducated parents (Bedi & Marshall, 1999). This can be further linked to the negative impact of the distance from the classroom tent has on children attendance, as attendance was lower among reporting families (p = 0.042* (supplementary table S2). This issue is more prominent for females as seen in Table 4 with parents reporting female safety commuting to school as an issue. Distance from school become a more pronounced challenge for older children to attend school without firm and clear support from parents that are appreciative for learning, something very much encountered in the developing world (Huisman & Smits, 2009; Zubrick, 2014).

4.2. Weekly formative assessment

The second parameter in the new strategy was the establishment of a weekly formative assessment checkpoints that assesses taught content within the same class to examine short memory retention and engagement within classroom (Antoniou & James, 2014). A statistically significant correlation coefficient of 0.961 was observed between those assessments and the final exam score (Table 2). This makes this parameter an excellent tool to make predicative assumption on final exam score and be able to tackle students’ needs early in the year. Furthermore, the analysis of formative assessment performance within classroom behaviour revealed a statistically significant correlation coefficient of 0.931(Table 2). This corelation can be described by better behaviour from teacher perspective is given to children with higher attention within classroom. Those students show better engagement with the taught content and better performance in the continuous assessment (Rucinski et al., 2018). Children performance in continuous formative assessment had no correlation with gender but showed a tendency to be higher with higher parents’ education (not statistically significant may be due to sample size (supplementary table S1). Further analysis is required or a larger sample size to ascertain these correlation values, which might be linked to more complicated factors like willingness of parents to support children education and the role model concept (Anderson & Cavallaro, 2002; Eccles, 2005).

4.3. Children behaviour

Children behaviour was not affected by gender but showed to be more affected by mother than father education (p = 0.095 v.s. 0.436 Table 3). This indicates the great role mothers play in shaping a better future for children impacting their behaviour in classroom and engagement with learning by encouraging school attendance. Korupp et al found that the educational background of the mother is more important on child attainment if the mother is a housewife compared to working mothers especially at the young age of primary school (Korupp et al., 2002). All of that can be further extrapolated to beyond the school and to society through human, cultural and Maternal human capital where mother transfer many of her cognitive and social skills to her child in dyadic basis (Harding et al., 2015). Even though not reaching statistical significance, our data suggests a bigger role of mother education on children behaviour which validates other studies on the universal role of maternal education on children development (Table 3) (Cuartas, 2022). Negatively, this parameter is adversely affected by the number of people sharing the refugee tent with the child (- 0.459, p < 0.05). Poverty, growing with limited care from adults, and interacting with adolescent in the family can all cause indirect effects on children wellbeing and resilience altering their social behaviour inside and outside school. This can be explained by the dilution effect proposed by Downey, where larger family size reduces, the already limited, resources families have in their tents in terms of capital and social possessions something clearly evident in our context (Downey, 1995).

4.4. Final examination

Final exams scores were also affected by social parameters (Table 3). Positively, gender has little impact on children performance and final examinations. However, children from higher educated parents performed better in the final exam compared with their peers form uneducated parents (observed more with further than mother p = 0.089 v.s 0.123 respectively). This finding is not statistically significant and should be reanalysed with larger sample size. Similar to behaviour within a classroom, final exam scores were adversely affected by the number of people sharing the refugee tent with the child (- 0.524, p < 0.01) (Downey, 1995). This indicates how the social parameters can have impact on children wellbeing which will impact children learning ability and achievement in school.

4.5. Parents perception around the initiative impact on children

Table 4 highlights parents’ perception on several aspects in relation to initiative impact on children such as communication with staff and awareness of the new teaching strategy. Parents were overall satisfied with simplicity and ease of communication with staff, aware of the new strategy, and were very positive on the initiative impact on their children. This reflects that education delivered professionally through a well-designed strategy in refugee camps can be an excellent starting point for social change for people under emergency circumstances (Sharma & Monteiro, 2016). The impact of such initiatives is not limited on children receiving education, but rather it creates trust between families and local organisations and establishes an educational database that can be used to inform other social initiatives that focus on mother and female education, child labour, mass vaccination and other relevant issues.

Several challenges were reported by parents in relation to their children education, some of them are faced by parents themselves and others by children (Table 4). Distance from the classroom tent came among the top reported challenges by children in parents’ perspective. Further analysis of this challenge revealed that it negatively impacts attendance in a statistically significant manner. It also negatively impacts behaviour in classroom, performance in continuous assessment and final examination, but the data were not statistically significant (supplementary table S1).

4.6. A strategy to deliver impact beyond education

This strategy works best with the introduction of special assistant and safeguarding teachers within the initiative. Students flagged with more than two parameters per week are either directed to special assistant or safeguarding teacher or both for follow-up. Scoring low on continuous formative assessment is reported to special assistant teacher who provide extra support to the child in need. In parallel, scoring low in attendance and/or behaviour is reported to safeguarding teacher, who visits the family, talks to the child, and investigates the root causes of disengagement and becomes a key point for flagging more complex cognitive and psychosocial difficulties that can be referred to other specialized organizations working in the region (Anyaegbu et al., 2022). Creating a system with tailored service that adapts to the camps context and captures their specific needs enhances the quality of teaching for children (as indicated by parents), something that can overcome many indirect issues of disengagement with school in emergency areas such as distance, poverty, and ignorance (Bedi & Marshall, 1999; Filmer, 2007).

It has been demonstrated that three educational parameters have an impact on the challenges faced by children in the modified teaching strategy, especially the distance from the classroom tent, and this proves the substantial association between children’s attendance and the challenges faced by them. Therefore, children education within refugee camps can be the centre point for stakeholders and humanitarian organizations that can come find solutions for some social factors such as child labour, displacement, and disability in collaboration with children’s parents. The support can be extended to parents themselves if needed but all of that aiming to enhance children academic performance for better future. So further studies can offer a deeper understanding of how each educational parameter affects challenges faced by both children and their parents in a larger sample size.

5. Conclusion

This study examined a modified educational strategy in the delivery of primary school education in refugees’ camps. The study found strong positive statistically significant correlation between attendance, in class behaviour and performance in weekly formative assessments with final exam scores despite the small number of students in the 4th grade. The modified strategy proves itself as very effective tool to flag and tackle children needs in advance to allow for adapted support. The study can be of great use for any initiative delivering education in areas of emergency within refugee’s camps. The observed associations between some of the educational parameters with social factors can be a starting point for more thoughtful assessment of the relationship that can uncover action points for policy makers and funding bodies supporting emergency zones. However, this should be done a larger cohort of students something was not possible in our situation due to practical and financial constraints.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the hard work of the whole educational team in Abjad initiative for education for their educational support and help with data collection in terms of the social parameters.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Taher Hatahet

Taher Hatahet methodology design, data analysis, writing, editing, and reviewing, project supervision.

Zainab Ekrayem

Zainab Ekrayem methodology design, data analysis, writing, and reviewing.

Sundus Badwi

Sundus Badwi data collection and reviewing.

Safaa Hardan

Safaa Hardan data collection and reviewing.

Alaa Edin Abdin

Aladin Abdeen editing and reviewing.

Omar Alrfooh

Omar Faisal Alrfooh, data analysis, editing, and reviewing.