Countries

Syria

  • General Details

    Context 

    The long-term vision of national education development in Syria is to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4 Goal by 2030.  In 2016, Syria elaborated its national policy statement to progressively realize the Education 2030 Agenda as an opportunity to link the humanitarian and development nexus.  

    On the humanitarian front, with the crisis in its seventh year, Syria has continued to suffer from the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in modern history. According to OCHA by the end of May 2017, 13.5 million people were in need of assistance, including 6.3 million internally displaced persons. 4.53 million people reside in hard-to-reach and besieged areas. The UNHCR data in September 2017 illustrates that more than 5.2 million people have sought refuge in neighboring countries namely Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt . ISIS and other entities designated as terrorist by the United Nations Security Council continue to use education to indoctrinate and recruit children.

    In the education sector, over 6 million children and youth from pre-school to secondary school age (in and out of school) and education personnel are in need of education assistance, including:

    • 118,000 Palestinian refugee children and 270,000 education personnel  
    • 1.75 million learners are out of school with 1.35 million at risk of dropping out 
    • 1.3 million learners in hard-to reach locations 
    • 300,000 in UN-declared besieged areas
    • 2 million school-age children are displaced as a result of the hostilities 
    • 600,000 children are living under the control of ISIS 
    • 150,000 are living in contested areas with active hostilities 
    • 300,000 teachers who fled are no longer in service causing an acute shortage of education personnel 
    • 1/3 schools is damaged, destroyed, inaccessible or used as a collective shelter or for other purposes 
    • 72 percent of youth between the age of 18 and 24 have been out of learning institutions for a minimum of five years .

    While responding to immediate learning crisis throughout the country, Syria has set out reforming its education system by diversifying learning pathways, improving quality of learning through a new national curriculum framework and revised assessment system, and strengthening national system by way of ensuring availability and use of quality data. 

    Challenges and opportunities

    While an increasing number of displaced persons have reportedly started returning home , the country continues to experience very fragile and volatile operational environments due to ongoing political and security challenges, which gravely impact the extent, scope and nature of UNESCO’s continued engagement with predictable financial resources from inside the country. 

    Nevertheless, since 2014, UNESCO has made great strides in contributing to educational provision throughout the country. As such, there is a firm foundation to build on and exponentially scale up the response programme over the next two years.  First, there remains strong commitment and leadership by existing national education authorities tasked to lead the Arab Region’s commitment to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4 which guides national education system reconstruction.  Second, despite its non-resident status, UNESCO has further solidified substantial partnership with Ministries of Education and of Higher Education, Syria National Commission for UNESCO and associated technical institutions.  Third, UNESCO has positioned itself strategically as the technical lead in supporting the country to bridge the humanitarian and development nexus by diversifying education provision with alternative pathways to learning and by strengthening capacities in education planning and management at both national and governorate levels.


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  • Country Target Status

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