Case Studies

Name of the teacher

No teacher

Country:

Greece

Name of the School:

Directorate of Secondary Education

School Typology:

Lower Secondary School, Upper Secondary School

Country:

Greece

City:

Thessaloniki

Background and Context:

Although there is a satisfying number of refugees children attending primary school we can not say so about the lower or higher secondary school. This fact is known as a "leakage of students" among the teachers and experts of secondary education and has become a really great challenge to face. The target group of age 15 -17 concerns most teachers because due to legal restrictions they cannot attend primary school and the choices are either to attend secondary school or intercultural schools. A respected number of this age refugees children are unccompanied and live in the shelters for unccompanied children. Even most of them started attending school they either attended not in a regularly base or abandoned it . For example a teacher started with a class of 15 and ended up with 4 children after a while.

Factual Description:

Moreover there are isssues related to cultural norms (some girls expressed they will stop because the don't feel good with the small percentage of girls in the class). To be mentioned and for the current period most of the children will not attend school because of the "Ramadan" fasting even if teachers try to convience them that will support them by not eating or drinking in front of them. Another great issue is the antipathy relations and sentiments between the different nationalities among refugees that are transferred in the classroom.
Other children consider it as useless to learn greek language and subjects because earlier or later they claim they will leave for other european countries.
As for the unccompanied children which is the group with the most problems, there is a lack of control or interest by a responsible. A guardian that will care about the attendance and their progress in school. Some of the children end up in groups of illegal activities or disappear (try to pass the borders to european countries)

Activities carried out:

All the activities or efforts are result of teachers (coordinators for the education of refugees children), who literally conduct a race beyond their basic services to ensure education to all of them. But since the problem became clear , the directorate for the secondary education decided to take actions and activities for the solution. First of all, to keep a register of all children that attend school (primary or secondary). Secondly they made a call to all the NGO's to send analytically education programmes and brochures they plan to implement in camps. That would lead in a coordination of needs and offers . These brochures will be distributed to parents and children of ages 5-18.

Assessment and lesson learnt:

The implementation of a register of the children that attend the morning primary and secondary school gives a statistical percentage of the situation. The details will assist further actions or activities that should or must be taken for the attendance of all the children to schools.
By collecrting educational programmes and brochures of all the NGO's and informing parents and children, a better and more inclusive range of choices are given. Based on their needs they will choose what they want to learn and there will be activities for all of them ( for example some persons know that they will relocate in another country so their children can attend the language course of that country). The feeding back procedure is the solution in a situation characterized by instability (the relocation or asylum procedure may lasts too long). Concluding , the services of the secondary education system take in charge to check, coordinate and inform all the actors about the possibilities.