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Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - In many parts of the world, mid-August is back-to-school season with frazzled parents dragging cranky children through store aisles buying school supplies, uniforms and books. The parents are often eagerly awaiting the first day of school after the two-month school vacation; the kids are often a little less eager.

But in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon, more than a million children of Syrian refugees, many of whom fled Syria years ago, are not enrolled in any educational program. In Jordan, bureaucratic obstacles, as well as a poverty rate of more than 86 percent, have made it harder for children to go to school.

According to Bill Van Esveld, senior children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, in Turkey, over half a million children under the age of 18 out of a total of 900,000 Syrian refugee children are not in school, and in Lebanon more than 250,000 children were not in school. In Jordan, there are 145,000 in school and 83,000 not attending school.

One reason is that Jordanian regulations, put in force before the Syrian refugee crisis began five years ago, is that any child who has been out of school for three years cannot return to school. In addition, refugees must present “service cards” issued by the Interior Ministry to enroll in public schools. Refugees who left camps after July 2014, and do not have a male Jordanian relative over 35 years old as a guarantor, are not eligible to receive these cards. Human Rights Watch says the total number of cases could be in the tens of thousands.

Mohammed Thneibat, Jordan’s Minister of Education, today announced that every child in Jordan under the age of 18, can enroll in school for the coming year. Those who do not have service cards will have until the end of the first semester to deal with the government bureaucracy.

“This is a really positive signal,” Van Esfeld told The Media Line. “The hope now is that we have some time to continue to work on the Interior Ministry to make sure they won’t be kicked out of school.”

The obstacles are not only bureaucratic, however. Many children have to work to help their families make ends meet. Child marriage has increased dramatically, and parents often worry about girls’ safety on the way to school.
But as the Syrian civil war has dragged on, and more and more children have missed years of school, there is concern about an entire lost generation of children and teenagers.

“One of our top priorities is to make sure that every vulnerable child gets an education,” UNICEF spokesman in Jordan Miraj Predhan told The Media Line. “Jordan is on the right track but needs support from the global community.”
One new program aims to allow 25,000 children who have not been in school for more than three years, to enroll in special classes to catch up on what they have missed and then join regular classes. However, according to Human Rights Watch, this program would only apply to children age 8 – 12.

The problem of Syrian refugee children not in school gets worse for odler children. Only about 5,500 of an estimated 25,000 or more secondary-school age Syrian children were enrolled in formal education last year. Others are working.
Getting Syrian children back in school is a priority for human rights groups. They hope that a success in Jordan will pave the way for similar programs in Turkey and Lebanon.

“The donor community has woken up and they would like to see a success story in Jordan,” Bill Van Esfeld said. “They say they want to prevent a lost generation but in many ways we already have it.”

*The Media Line