“This is Not a School Break or Holiday”: Syrian Refugee Students in Turkey during Covid-19
By Abdullah Atmacasoy. Photos courtesy of author.
12 May 2020
Syrian refugees in Turkey are not a monolithic community, and Syrian refugee children have diverse educational needs, resources, and attainments that may fail any centralized short-term education policies. Taking these core aspects into regard throughout my research, I explore determinants of the second language proficiency of refugee students in monolingual countries.
On 12 March 2020, I was visiting a Turkish public school in Istanbul’s slums to conduct classroom observations and interviews with teachers regarding language education for refugee students. Despite having only one officially confirmed Covid-19 case in Turkey, teachers were anxious for the unrecognized spread of the virus and were expecting a national lockdown with immediate school closures.
That afternoon, National Education Minister Ziya Selçuk announced nationwide school closures with a distance learning roadmap and heralded his oft-quoted statement: “This is not a school break or holiday.” Initiated on 23 March, the country’s emergency distance education scheme aims to support 18 million K-12 students via regular lessons broadcasted over three newly established TV channels; online learning through the Education Information Network (EBA), a state-sponsored distance learning platform managed by the Ministry of National Education (MONE); and additional live lessons for 8th graders and 12th graders on the EBA platform. To attempt bridging the digital divide, major mobile operators are offering free data access ranging from 5 to 8 GB that can facilitate students’ access to the EBA platform. School closures have now been extended until the end of May, and the Ministry has recently announced that students will be automatically promoted to the next grade and supported with catch-up and remedial courses in the fall semester.
“These distance solutions may fail to meet the expectations of some students who have still literacy problems in Turkish or who are primarily in need of acquiring cognitive academic language skills to follow mainstream courses.”
In policy, over 600,000 refugee students already in Turkish public schools are meant to benefit from the distance education opportunities available to their Turkish peers. However, extended school closures will likely have more severe repercussions for refugee students from large, low-income families. These students confront several challenges including their access to resources, absence of optimal home environment for learning that is especially constrained by overcrowded houses, and lack of nurturing relationships with their Syrian peers and elders. These challenges are not unique: disadvantaged Turkish students face similar hurdles in their learning. In the case of refugee students though, the education system’s monolingual orientation mandating Turkish as the official medium of instruction and language barriers among refugee learners triggers additional obstacles for distance education.
Stemming from these obstacles, extended school closures may lead to a significant increase in school drop-outs for refugee students. Though refugee children’s overall K-12 enrollment rates have increased from 30% to 64% from 2014 to 2020 (MONE), pre-pandemic statistics still point to over 400,000 out-of-school Syrian children. As school closures get extended, it may become harder to turn the tide and could further exacerbate access related problems.
Before the pandemic, in September 2019, the Turkish MONE had already established “cohesion classrooms” for Syrian students with low Turkish proficiency. These segregated classrooms were scheduled to last from one to two semesters based on students’ proficiency in Turkish language. However, school closures have made it impossible to evaluate the impact of this contentious segregated model. During distance education, cohesions classrooms are substituted with “Turkish for Cohesion” lessons for refugee students at primary and lower-secondary levels. These 20-minute lessons, broadcasted on EBA TV channels, aim to support students with basic interpersonal language skills, irrespective of their grade levels. This video is an example of daily courses for refugee students at the primary level.
In addition, the government has prepared leaflets for parents and students in Turkish and Arabic languages and provided a monthly schedule online. These materials, including health tips, riddles, songs, family games, word of the day, and trivia facts, are also circulated on a daily basis on social networking sites.
Examples of daily leaflets published by the Turkish MONE for refugee students and their families. The first is published in Turkish; the second is published in Arabic.
The diversification in teaching modes is instrumental in maintaining students’ ties with formal education and in increasing the likelihood of accessing basic content. However, a one-size-fits-all approach for refugee students may not reap the expected benefits and even become counterproductive, leaving a sense of negligence and inefficiency. Considering the diversity in students’ needs, readiness, and prior knowledge, a Turkish language teacher supporting her refugee students via WhatsApp noted: “These distance solutions may fail to meet the expectations of some students who have still literacy problems in Turkish or who are primarily in need of acquiring cognitive academic language skills to follow mainstream courses”.
To compensate for the shortcomings of distance education, select public school teachers use media outlets and social networking services to demonstrate examples of supporting students with individualized instruction and ways to track them via WhatsApp during school closures. To illustrate, the picture on the left (below) exemplifies how a cohesion classroom teacher endeavors to check refugee students’ assignments on daily themes ranging from money to clothes, while the picture on the right shows some visuals aimed to teach target vocabulary on special days and celebrations.
PC: @feray42piktes on Twitter
PC: @zehra_ogrtmn on Twitter & Instagram
The majority of Syrians in Turkey are urban refugees living in overcrowded houses. Some children have to participate in household chores and look after younger siblings while their parents are away for long hours to work in underpaid jobs. Apart from school closures, Turkey has also imposed a curfew for people younger than 20 years of age that completely confines all students to their houses. A primary school teacher emphasizes the loss that this has brought about: “The schools were not only a ground for learning, but it was also a place for students to realize their childhood”. In accordance with this statement, the blanks in the picture on the left above lead me to contemplate the underlying reasons behind some students’ absence in the assignments and to question if these students have time to focus on their learning, the efficiency of measures to maintain their education, and the likelihood of bridging the gap when they return to school.
To mitigate the effects of that disruption, a formative evaluation on distance courses should be carried out concomitantly with an online needs assessment study of refugee families to identify potential gaps and accordingly plan remedial programs in advance with a strong evidence base. Furthermore, administrators and teachers must continue tracking students via formal and informal means to sustain students’ ties with schools and enhance their sense of belonging and connection. We may be going through unprecedented times, but these uncertain times should not obscure refugee students’ dreams and aspirations, and the many roles schools play in the lives of learners and their families.
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this publication belong solely to the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of REACH or the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
About the Author
Abdullah Atmacasoy is a doctoral candidate at Middle East Technical University and conducts his research in collaboration with DivER at Hamburg Universität. His research focuses on the bridging systems and determinants of second language proficiency for newcomer students. He can be reached at abdullah.atmacasoy@metu.edu.tr, or through his website.