Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the UN report, published in September, that more than 3.7 million school-aged refugee children have no school to go to.

The UK directly supports a number of bilateral education programmes for refugees providing indirect support through multilateral contributions to organisations such as UNHCR. Specifically on the Syria crisis, in 2015/16 UK Aid, as part of the No Lost Generation Initiative (NLGI), has provided nearly 392,000 children in Syria and the wider region with formal education and nearly 95,000 with non-formal education. Additional psychological support has been provided to nearly 199,000 children, and 350,000 text books to children in Lebanon, nearly 100,000 of which are Syrian refugees.

The UK has been instrumental in creating a new global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises – called ‘Education Cannot Wait’ – which was launched at the World Humanitarian Summit in May this year. This fund will support displaced children to access quality education, as part of its wider mandate to improve education in emergency and crises affected countries. The UK pledged £30million for two years to the fund, as the largest founding donor, which will contribute towards the fund reaching 4.5 million children in its first two years. The UK also supports research on refugee education, education in emergencies and through a new partnership with the World Bank on their Global Program on Forced Displacement.