Q: Can you introduce yourself?

A: I am Amira Salima, Educational Officer at Catholic Relief Services. Basically, I work with higher-age refugees and students who want to study in Egyptian universities. 

Q: In which ways does CRS support refugee students?

A: CRS supports students from KG to university if they have the required documents, holding the UNHCR card, blue or yellow. We give them an educational grant; it is an amount of money that we give them in two different entailments. The amount differs depending on your situation, for example, if you are an unaccompanied minor you will receive more money, but we cannot share the amount. This grant is for refugees enrolled in public schools and community schools, but refugees enrolled in private schools do not receive it. 

Q: Who are you giving the money to?

A: We give the money to the parents, but before we do so we interview the students so we make sure that they really go to school. And for having a guarantee that the money is going to the school fees what we do is a follow-up, so we do not have a specific measurement to make sure that the fees go to the school. But this is why we have two installments because for receiving the second one they need to handle the recipe that they paid the fees of the school. The second one is after March but I will check the exact times. 

Q: Which other types of assistance do you give the students or learning centers?

A: In addition to the education grant we do bridging classes. It is to support the students in their transition to public schools. It is hard for them to enter public schools because they are not used to the Egyptian curriculum. Most of them come from community schools where they follow the Sudanese curriculum. We also give them remote classes, for those that are already in public schools, it is like private lessons, to fulfill the learning gaps and to solve the difficulties that they might encounter. We also provide those students with tablets, we also give tablets to some community schools. We also provide language lessons, English and Arabic, we usually announce the opening of the enrollment on our Facebook page, and students just register, first come, first served, although sometimes we have specific targets.  Once they are in the course we provide them with the internet, we give them an internet, wifi device so in case we transmit the course remotely they can join. We also provide them with transportation facilities. This year we offer around 50 spots. 

We also provide extracurricular activities such as life skills activities or activities to adapt to the host community. As for the life skills activities, it is to teach them how to avoid or protect themselves if they face bullying, racism, or sexual harassment. And we just introduced this new initiative called UNICEF learning passport. It is like a web page where you have the whole Sudanese curriculum and extra practice activities,  so the students can access it from their homes and prepare themselves. In this online platform we also have other resources like life skills advice, also advises for the teachers, and also for the parents, so they can support their children with school. Everyone can access it. You just need to create a user name. 

We also work with the teachers and the school managers of the community schools. We provide the schools with educational supplies. We work with the teachers and the school managers together, we give them training on how to improve active learning. For example each year we train 500 teachers in community schools to be able to teach effectively. We are the ones selecting them from the number of learning centers that we work with. But the main idea is to train managers how to train their teachers, so they can do it. Because we do not have the capacity to provide the training to all the teachers. 

Q: When did you start assisting refugees?

A: Our work started 20 years ago. Usually, we are the ones responsible for the education sector, so organizations such as UNHCR or UNICEF give us money, they give us the funds and we are the ones implementing it, then they supervise and evaluate our work. They give us guidelines. Each year we have an agreement with them, we target specific schools and objectives, and how we reach those goals. For example, now we are focusing on integrating students into public education. It is important because none of the community schools are supervised by the Ministry of Education, only a few centers and just for KG. 

Q: Do you give economic aid to community schools?

A: Not really, we provide them with furniture, training, maintenance, and some lego for the KG. I mean what we focus more on is to make sure that the students and children there are safe. We work with around 174 community schools. There are a lot and every time we discover new community schools. It is hard. We collect data from the student's enrollment letters when they apply for the education grant, and then we visit the school to see if this school really exists. The thing is that we face it multiple times, some of the community members just come here with fake authorization letters just to get the money. 

Q: Are those community schools mainly Sudanese and South Sudanese? 

A: Yes, most of them are for the African community. 

Q: Do you help students to pay the senior 3 fees for taking the exams for entering university? 

A: We used to pay for the exam fees, but now it is much more limited. This year we are providing the schools with the money for paying the exam fees just for unaccompanied minors, understood as those who do not have family members here. We pay them the whole amount. 

Q: The UNHCR stopped funding the community schools in 2018? Why do you think UNHCR took this decision?

A: From 2018 onwards we had many complaints about the community schools, especially telling us that a lot of their refugee students are from nationalities that cannot access public schools and also telling us that even allowed, students such as South Sudanese or Yemenis face huge barriers as they do not speak the language. This is why we started to offer them activities to bridge the gap, and we give them this grant so at least, the refugees of those nationalities that cannot enter public schools have something. But you know many learning centers are businesses. They often teach in just a very small apartment and call that a school. They do not have qualified teachers,  and also the Sudanese curriculum does not provide the students with the needed skills. We can see that from those students that enter public universities with the Sudanese curriculum, their scores are much lower. This is why in the scholarship we accept very few students from the community schools. The Sudanese curriculum is not the main problem I mean. The problem is not just about the content but also the teachers, the way they teach, and the skills that students acquire. It happened to us in the past that many students entered university with our scholarship and then dropped out because they didn’t have the skills. They had problems with the language. Our scholarship is funded by the German government and it is an agreement between Germany and the UNHCR. We are the ones implementing the scholarship. We have criteria like the grades of the students, being registered at the UNHCR, and providing us with the secondary school transcript and exam. We also accept the Sudanese senior 3 exams of community schools, so we announce the scholarship and they apply. Then they go to the next level, the interviews, and then they pass the interview and if they have the documentation, the scholarship is for four years and it includes financial support. Once they are enrolled through the scholarship we also provide them with extracurricular activities and private lessons to make them succeed. The number of spots available differs every year. Last year we had 200 spots, and we usually have around 1.000 students applying for them. 

Q: Do you give preferences to certain nationalities when it comes to giving scholarships? Do you give scholarships to Eritreans? 

A: No, nationality is not a criterion. But we also do not give them to Eritreans because there is this recent rule of the government that says that Eritreans that have the Sudanese certificate cannot be enrolled at public universities, so if they come with the Sudanese certificate we cannot give them the scholarship. 

Q: Do you know if this rule also applies to other nationalities?

A: I do not think so but there are some nationalities that face more barriers than others. They require for certain nationalities a lot of documentation that many refugee students do not have. They require a school transcript from primary school. We have encountered this with nationalities from Chad and Congo. They asked for school transcripts from 6 years ago. But then if a Sudanese or South Sudanese student comes they only ask for the Sudanese exam certificate. 

Q: Do you have cases of other nationalities entering university with the Sudanese curriculum?

A: Yes, the African community as Somalis, Ethiopians, or Yemenis are entering universities with the Sudanese curriculum. This rule is only for the Eritreans, I do not know why. This is a legal decision that came out, we had this information from Wafidin, this rule came two years ago. Before, we had Eritreans with Sudanese curriculum entering universities. Now what we recommend for the Eritrean community is to do an Egyptian placement test that the Ministry of Education provides. The community used not to know about it, so it is basically an exam that the Eritreans who passed the senior 3 exams and are holding the Sudanese certificate do, and then regarding their results they give them the equivalent of the Egyptian certificate that will allow them to enter university. This is a process that the Ministry of Education provides. I will try to give you more information about this. 

Q: Do you know if this Wafidin rule is also for Ethiopians?

A: I do not think so because we have Ethiopians enrolled in our scholarship. The financial amount depends on the nationality, so Syrian refugees pay the same as the Egyptians. The Sudanese and South Sudanese have a 90% discount on the fee for international students, and the others pay the tuition fees as foreigners. I am not allowed to say how much we give them for the scholarship but it is enough. 

Q: In the public schools which nationalities are legally allowed to enter?

A: The Sudanese, South Sudanese, Syrian, and Yemenis. Other nationalities are allowed to enroll only in private schools. But even for those allowed to, they face barriers with documentation and it is a bit difficult to obtain such as a school transcript from their home country, original birth certificate, or valid passport, and most of them have no valid passport.

Q: You as a refugee are allowed to have a valid passport and the UNHCR blue card at the same time?

A: Yes, many refugees have this, it is a little bit like this, it is not legal at all, but many have it and sometimes they go back to their home country if they want to. But it is difficult, you know, for renewing your passport you need to go back to your home country and close your UNHCR file, and then when you come back it is so difficult to reopen it again, the process takes so long.

Q: But why are the public governmental schools asking for the passports of the refugees if in theory their passport is canceled and their ID is the UNHCR card?

A: You are right, I am not sure why the Egyptian system does not understand that refugees have no passports and that they only have their UNHCR ID, even for the university here, one of the requirements that they have is to present their passports. But then if they do not have it, they go to Wafidin and ask for an exception to be able to use the UNHCR card.

Q: Do the Syrian and Yemeni community schools follow the Egyptian curriculum?

A: Yes, as I know many of them teach the Egyptian curriculum, and in some grades, they even teach the curriculum from their own countries. For example, Syrians are enrolled in public Egyptian schools for taking the exam for entering universities there, but in reality, the parents prefer to send their kids to learning centers. You know Syrians are more integrated than the African community but they still face discrimination, and also the language barrier, the dialect is different so the children struggle to follow the classes. 

Q: Does the government have an agreement for teaching the Syrian curriculum?

A: No, I do not think so, all the Syrians take the Egyptian curriculum. 

Q:  I know that a lot of learning centers are trying to introduce the South Sudanese curriculum. Are you also willing to support the South Sudanese curriculum like uploaded in the web page?

A: As far as I know they are still in the process. Some community schools started to teach the South Sudanese curriculum, and with that, we will have the same approach, there is this agreement also with the government. And you know we understand that South Sudanese are paying a huge amount for the Sudanese exam fees and many are not able to pay it, so they just drop out and do not continue studying. We support the introduction of the South Sudanese curriculum and we want to bring the exams back. But what we really want is to have students enrolled in public schools and bridge the gap. 

Q: Do you know when they increased the price for the senior 3 exams? And why?

A: I really do not know why, but it is still the same amount as last year, and maybe one of the reasons is that when they know that there are organizations supporting the students to pay this amount they just raise the amount for getting more money. This is maybe just one of the reasons. Because before 2018 UNHCR was giving us money for support with the exam fees, so we were supporting all the refugees and not just the unaccompanied minors. But when UNHCR stopped, we just rely now on private funds, so we can just pay for the most vulnerable which are unaccompanied minors. 

Q: The training sessions that you give to the teachers, how long do they last and how many spots do you have per year?

A: Each year we train 400 or 500 teachers. UNICEF provides this training. 

Q: Do you cooperate with Safe the Children?

A: Well, we maintain contact with them and we coordinate ourselves for making sure that we are not implementing the same projects in the same place. 

Q: From those 174 learning centers, how many are Syrians, and Eritreans?

A: I have only one Syrian community school, I have 8 Eritrean community schools

Q: Can you give me figures about the number of refugee students in gender and nationality?

A: We have 20.904 refugee students enrolled in community schools that are registered with CRS, for only secondary education we have 3.224 students. 

Q: What about refugee students in private schools?

A: We do not give them any assistance, just to some specific cases and if they have special needs. For example, for people with disabilities, or for example if they are Iraqis and cannot enter public schools so we pay a percentage of the private schools but that is not that big. 3.300 refugee kids are enrolled in public schools, most of them are Syrians and Yemenis. While in community schools we have many more students and most of them are Sudanese, South Sudanese, and Eritreans. 

Additional questions & answers: 

1-For the Egyptian placement test, the students who don’t have any certification of school transcripts, they can go to the educational administration in their area of residence and ask for the procedures and the examination timing so they will be placed in a grade based on their assessment scores (we are not sure of the timing, it is scheduled based on the educational administration, but usually during summer before the start of the academic year). 

2-The Sudanese exam fees differ based on nationality. It is 550 dollars for Sudanese and South Sudanese only, while any other nationalities pay 1500$. None can determine the reasons behind the increase or when they expect it to be increased. (Observation: this makes no sense, this seems that CRS is not really having much information about this) 

3-The verification department has no idea about the authorization of the Faisel Sudanese Community school by the Ministry of Education, but they will check, however, the school is still considered as a community school to CRS, teaching the Sudanese curriculum only. No information was shared regarding teaching the Egyptian curriculum, also no information on schools registered in our database teaching other international curricula. (observation: confirm) 

4-For teachers’ training, the training started in 2018, and CRS tries to make sure that some teachers receive advanced training the following year. Of course, new teachers join and others drop out sometimes when they leave the schools or are no longer reachable, usually the round is 5-7 days so basically CRS builds upon the curriculum each year to keep following up with the teachers as well. 

5-Numbers of students according to nationality, and gender: 

It is estimated that 33.5% of the total number of refugees are between 3 and 17 years old.