Insights into Education Programs in Refugee Settings from the Humanitarian Education Accelerator

The Humanitarian Education Accelerator (HEA) program was set up by the Department for International Development (DFID), the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees... [ view full abstract ]

The Humanitarian Education Accelerator (HEA) program was set up by the Department for International Development (DFID), the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). It aims to generate rigorous evidence to understand how to transform high-potential pilot projects into scalable educational initiatives for refugees and other members of displaced communities worldwide. The HEA program aims to contribute to the education literature by providing insight into two areas that remain underexplored in the sector: 1) understanding the factors and constraints for successful education programs to scale up, particularly in protracted humanitarian crises contexts and 2) providing rigorous evidence on promising education programs in emergency areas.  To support HEA’s goal, American Institutes for Research (AIR) is in the process of implementing impact and process evaluations of education programs in refugee settings and is providing technical assistance to innovation teams to strengthen their internal M&E capacity. This paper serves to introduce the HEA through presentations about the conceptual framework that will be used to inform the scale up of education programs in refugee settings. In addition, we will present some baseline and preliminary findings of the impact and process evaluations we design and conduct under the HEA. The interventions evaluated range from tablet learning games for refugee children in Sudan and Jordan, online post-secondary education in a refugee camp in Rwanda, and remedial classes for girls at risk of dropping out in refugee camps in Kenya. The paper will also focus on the importance of close partnerships with the implementers of the education programs that are supported under the HEA. In addition, we will show the importance of using mixed methods in protracted crisis settings where interventions often focus on achieving intangible results that are hard to measure using quantitative research alone.