For Christmas week we are thrilled to have a guest blog from Kate McAllister of the School Bus Project.
Pivotal Education are making a donation to the project instead of sending out Christmas cards to the schools we work with this year. We encourage others to support this excellent cause too.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
At the School Bus Project, we believe you don't have to go to school to get an education... school can come to you!
The School Bus Project has developed in response to the growing humanitarian crisis in Calais.
Our aim is to facilitate the participation of migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in free, quality education.
Humanitarian crises have traditionally been seen as short-term interruptions to a country's developmental progress. We used to think that a war would end, floods would subside and things would get back to ‘normal'. We now know that this is far from the truth. Research from the Refugee Studies Centre (Oxford) revealed that the average length of displacement in the 30 major protracted refugee situations globally was almost 20 years in 2011. 51% of refugees globally are under the age of 18.
The UNHCR figures suggest that
Only 1 in 2 refugees attend primary school
Only 1 in 4 refugees attend secondary school
Only 1% of refugees gain access to skills or higher education.
In many situations, the ‘teachers' have a student ratio of 1:70 and often lack the 10-day's training that would categorise them as "trained". Refugees globally find themselves in unstable, unsafe situations of displacement for long periods of time, with limited access to basic services, including education, and scarce or non-existent employment opportunities. The refugees living in the Jungle are no exception: according to researchers at the University of Birmingham, the camp fails to meet basic standards set out by the World Health Organization and the UNHCR.
As a result of our initial visits & discussions with refugees, we will be focussing our immediate work on supporting mobile educational activities in four key areas:
- Psychosocial Support & Protection
- Basic Skills
- Job Skills
- Teacher Training & Support
We will provide an opportunity for everyone in the camp to participate in some form of educational activity, be it as learners or educators. Ultimately, we will see teachers & experts from within camp working side by side with UK volunteers, educating others.
Starting in January, our short-term goals include:
- Facilitating the participation of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants in education in three of our key areas - psychosocial support & protection, basic skills, and job skills;
- Laying the groundwork for the fourth key area - teacher training and support; and
- Training our first group of UK volunteers
Our mid-term goals include:
- Providing a consistent presence of School Bus Project volunteers in the camp who are delivering quality teaching;
- Providing a consistent quality curriculum in camp where refugees can take part in activities as often as they would like; and
- Identifying refugees with skills they are willing to share to be awarded scholarships to train with The School Bus Project, empowering them as teachers, and allowing us to broaden our curriculum further to provide a broad and diverse curriculum for all learners in camp.
Our long-term goals include:
- Facilitating the transition of refugees into higher learning and job opportunities;
- 'Handing over the keys' to the School Bus so that it is primarily owned and ‘driven' by the refugees themselves; and
- Scaling up our response and facilitating the participation of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants in quality education across Europe and further afield.
We have developed a rigorous volunteer training programme for our UK volunteers. The programme is made up of an eLearning component and an in-person component. Volunteers from within the Jungle population who wish to become teachers will also attend the in-person training module in Calais alongside UK volunteers. The School Bus Project will award scholarships to attend the training. The eLearning component will cover the aims of the School Bus Project, the situation in Calais, refugee education, and what resources are available to support teaching in challenging contexts. For the in-person component, volunteers will attend a 3-day workshop, which will include first aid training leading to qualification (facilitated by a qualified health professional), orientation, and pedagogical skills-building. If you would like to contribute towards a scholarship fund or sign up to volunteer as a teacher, please get in touch. If you'd like to add your ideas to the mix or design a course of study, hop aboard the School Bus Project @: theschoolbus62@gmail.com.
www.schoolbusproject.org or https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-school-bus-project-mobile-education#/story
Kindest regards,
Kate McAllister
Principal of The School Bus