Conducted in partnership with New York University's Global TIES for Children (NYU-TIES), this new research from the IRC finds that an education approiach that combines remedial tutoring with social-emotional learning has a positive impact on the learnign outcomes for refugee children. The project, titled “Education in Emergencies: Evidence for Action (3EA)” and with start-up funding by Dubai Cares, looked at the impact of providing complementary education programs to refugee children enrolled in public schools in Lebanon, Niger, and Sierra Leone.

Key Takeaways

  • There is now evidence across multiple conflict and crisis contexts that IRC’s Healing Classrooms approach to both formal education and tutoring is an effective strategy to increase children’s basic literacy and numeracy skills.
  • There is also evidence that adding Mindfulness to Healing Classrooms tutoring provides a boost in improving academic and some social-emotional outcomes when compared to students enrolled in public school alone.
  • While the SEL activities did not achieve all the desired outcomes, we hypothesize that with improved design and implementation, SEL activities could become even more impactful in driving meaningful improvements to children’s holistic learning outcomes.

In addition to this global policy brief, please find the country-specific briefs below: