4 million refugee kids not enrolled in school

LONDON: More than half the world’s school-age refugees are excluded from education as host nations struggle under the weight of growing humanitarian crises, the United Nations said yesterday.

Four million refugee children around the world do not attend school, an increase of half a million from a year earlier, UN’s refugee agency said in a report.

“Education is a way to help young people heal, but it is also the way to revive entire countries,” said the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.

“Based on current patterns, unless urgent investment is undertaken, hundreds of thousands more children will join these disturbing statistics.”

The agency said there were nearly 20 million refugees under its mandate, which excludes about five million Palestinian refugees, by the end of last year as the number of displaced people worldwide grew.

More than half were children and 7.4 million were of school age. Only 61 per cent of refugee children attended primary school, compared with more than 90 per cent of all children, the report said.

The figure was even lower for older children, with less than one in four secondary-age refugees in school. Just one per cent attended higher education, compared with more than a third of young people globally.

More than 500,000 refugee children were newly enrolled in school last year, but the rapidly growing refugee population means the proportion missing out on education has not shrunk.