New York Times, 16 Sept 2016
The report said only 50 percent of refugee children have access to primary education, compared with a global average of more than 90 percent. As children grow older the gap widens — 22 percent of refugee adolescents attend secondary school, compared with the global average of 84 percent. One percent of refugees attend college, compared with the global average of 34 percent.
More than half the world’s not-in-school refugee children live in seven countries: Chad, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Lebanon, Pakistan and Turkey, according to the report.
It singled out the Syrian civil war as both a prime contributor to the refugee crisis and an example of how armed conflict can devastate educational progress. In 2009, 94 percent of school-age Syrian children attended school, compared with 60 percent as of June of this year, the report added.
Findings were based partly on a comparison of refugee data with global school enrollment data compiled by Unesco, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
