Children’s education and parental support in Jewi Refugee Camp, Ethiopia: Unraveling the challenges.

Abstract:

Objective: In this study, we examined the situation of parents and
caregivers of the refugee children in Jewi refugee camp with the aim of
understanding the roles they play in the education of the children.
Background: Effective educational interventions benefit from parental
engagement. This may be particularly the case for refugee children, who
typically have had several traumatic experiences during the departure from
their home country, while traveling to safer places, and then on arrival to a
refugee camp. Methods: A qualitative single case study approach was used to
investigate this issue. Refugee primary school students, teachers, school
principals, parents, and camp administrators were used as data sources.
Individual and group interviews, observation, and document analysis were used
to collect the data. Interpretive and narrative approaches were used for data
analysis. Result: The results of the study indicate that parental support for
the learning of refugee children was low. The effort schools make to help
parents, who themselves have experienced traumatic situations, engage in
their children’s education was found to be equally low. Conclusion: There was
a low level of awareness regarding the value of education, mainly because
individuals had endured long periods of war in South Sudan, during which
education was devalued and the educational infrastructure was devastated.
Lack of awareness on children’s right to education is expressed in failure to
treat adopted children as equal to biological children. As a result, in this
study, parents’ engagement in the education of children was low. Implication:
There is a need to maximize local and international support to refugees to
fulfill the basic needs of refugee children and their caregivers. Schools in
refugee camps are responsible not only for providing education to students;
their work should extend to providing supportive services to
parents/guardians in their parenting practices at home. In addition, there
should be continued effort to reunite children who are separated from their
parents; implement comprehensive parenting strategies; and develop parent
education programs.