Education International Research
While the academic and rights-based discourse on disability has significantly improved in some countries, the implementation of inclusive education has been slow. This shift toward rethinking disability in the implementation phase is a difficult one, but it is key to truly transforming education systems.121
Teachers are not adequately trained and supported to provide migrants, refugees and internally displaced peoples with quality education To achieve Target 4.5, teachers and education support personnel must be empowered and provided with the necessary skills, tools and support to help migrants and refugees recover, adjust and flourish in their new environment. However, teachers are inadequately prepared to teach migrants, refugees and internally displaced students. Seventy-three per cent (73%) of Syrian teachers surveyed by an NGO had received no training on providing children with psychosocial support.122 Teachers often lack necessary support to face the challenges posed by students who require individual attention. An EI toolkit123 for teachers who work with migrant and refugee children aims to help fill this gap by providing teachers with advice on strategies and practical actions they can take to make their classrooms more inclusive and effective for all children. A 2018 study by EI124 of how education systems integrate refugees in four European countries found that in all four cases, coordination and cooperation between different levels of the education system (between teachers and support staff at the classroom level, among schools, between schools and municipalities, and between local authorities and national governments) and adequate resources (such as multilingual teaching assistants and professional development) were both lacking. Some countries are better prepared than others. Box 8 below shows how unions and governments in Sweden have collaborated on strategic approaches to integrate not only refugee students, but also refugee teachers, into the system.
Box 8: In Sweden, Teacher Representatives and Governments Are Working Together to Welcome New Arrivals into Swedish Schools In an increasingly mobile world with people constantly on the move, education systems need to find ways to respond to and benefit from changing demographics. There is much to be learnt from the mechanisms that have been developed in Sweden since 2015 to help integrate refugee teachers into the local teaching workforce and refugee students into schools. Since the adoption of the SDGs in 2015, Sweden has seen changes in its demographics as the country welcomes numerous new arrivals. In 2015, 15% of the total population in Sweden was born abroad, making Sweden one of the OECD countries with the largest foreign-born population. 125 GRO.EI-IE
Integrating newly arrived teachers into the workforce Sweden suffers from a shortage of qualified teachers. There are also numerous refugee teachers arriving in Sweden. Therefore, with the input of Lärarförbundet (the Swedish Teachers’ Union), a fasttrack initiative has been developed to facilitate qualified refugee teachers’ entry into the workforce, a solution that aims to solve both problems. Prior to 2015, teachers who had an adequate level of Swedish but needed further training before being able to apply for the Swedish teachers’ certificate were able to access the necessary training at higher education institutions through the “foreign teachers’ continuing education” programme (ULV).
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Principe, T. Rethinking disability: a primer for educators and education unions. Education International. Retrieved from: https://issuu.com/ educationinternational/docs/rethinking_disability_-_a_primer_fo?e=3689445/66100655 UNESCO. 2019. Migration, Displacement and Education. Building Bridges not Walls. Global Education Monitoring Report. p. 72. Retrieved from: https:// en.unesco.org/gem-report/report/2019/migration Education International. 2018. Promoting integration of migrants and refugees in and through education: A toolkit. Retrieved from: https://eiie.sharepoint. com/:b:/s/refugeesandmigrants/ES5-8MzrCqlLt5UEBR1Mzp8BrOMcCpYAeGr_Oup7Rohu7w?e=qd4axL Bunar, N. (ed.). 2018. Education: Hope for Newcomers in Europe. Education International. Retrieved from: https://issuu.com/educationinternational/ docs/28_feb_doc_web Cordingley, P. et al. Constructing teachers’ professional identities: case studies. Education International.