Inclusive school enrollment practices

Promote sustainable, inclusive participation

To promote sustainable, inclusive participation within the education system, it is important to collect and share disaggregated statistical data and other information in order to determine to what extent persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities are employed in educational institutes.

This should then also lead to designing concrete measurable actions to facilitate minority participation in the legal framework with the aim that their composition will reflect the diversity within the society with respect to race, ethnicity, religion, and language.

It is important to strengthen and improve the meaningful participation of the diverse minority groups in all decision-making bodies, through targeted and context-specific actions aimed at marginalized populations, women and girls, and their families and communities.

For example, UNHCR promotes equal access for women and adolescent girls to sustainable and market-oriented vocational and technical training programmes, employment opportunities, cash-for-work initiatives, microcredit schemes, child care, and educational assistance.

Another strategy is to strengthen screening mechanisms to identify and respond to minority needs, especially for displaced population women who could be at risk of gender-based violence.  

Focus on target-based actions, especially for those who may lack access to registration facilities due to disability, age, location or any other obstacles. This might imply having strategies such as including participatory assessment results in all protection strategies and through all phases of the programme management cycle.

Efforts at advancing minority participation with respect to exclusion should be taken into account. The following should be referred to:

• The general international human rights standards, provisions of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities,
• UN Forum on minority issues recommendations,

For more resources on inclusion in education, please refer to UNESCO’s Library on inclusion.

Improve the quality of participation

Building government capacity for registration should be part of every country’s registration Strategy. This involves gaining the government’s understanding and approval and offering technical expertise and financial support. Providing technical and financial assistance, alone, does not constitute capacity-building. There are five steps in determining a registration strategy:

• Determine registration objectives in light of problems, gaps and opportunities identified.
• Determine the roles of stakeholders.
•  Determine specific operational opportunities and constraints.
• Choose methodology and tools.
• Determine resource and infrastructure needs

A good registration strategy usually involves the following:

• Defines the population to be registered.
• Ensures compliance with the minimum standards and respect for other relevant principles.
• Aligns the registration plan, including methodology, techniques, and deliverables, with the protection objectives of the operation.
• Involves all stakeholders and co-ordinates their activities.
• Finds the most appropriate tools and mobilizes the necessary resources.
•  Is solutions-oriented.

Promote peer support for integration. For example, Finland’s Vertaiskoto project, a peer support group for integration, was designed to support and guide immigrants and refugees in the early stages of their resettlement. The project included small discussion groups for women, men and elderly persons organised in the native languages of the participants. Courses were also run on topics ranging from health care and sexuality, gender equality, and religion, to Finnish history. The success of the Vertaiskoto project prompted Finnish municipalities to incorporate peer support into their ongoing integration work after funding for the project ended.

Improve participation of persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities in the educational administrative fields, and the participation should be effective and sustainable. Relevant stakeholders’ efforts should be aimed not only at recruitment but also at guaranteeing retention and vertical mobility opportunities for minority representatives

Improve community involvement. This step is essential to all registration processes, with consultations with relevant minority groups and their communities, about registration and related processes being critical for it to be successful.

Registration staff should identify key minority leaders (especially refugee leaders during crisis situations) who can assist in organising household or “control sheet” registration activities and who can disseminate information to new arrivals. Sensitisation and mobilisation campaigns should be conducted on an ongoing basis as the displaced populations arrive at the host communities. Furthermore, failure to consult with the populations concerned leads to mutual distrust between the registrars and those being registered.

Have leadership representation from minority backgrounds. Since minority leaders could share experiences and cultural understandings with students who come from the same background, they can link students, parents, and other educational stakeholders, while modelling success for everyone. For example, minority principals’ understandings about students’ home environments may help them determine rewards or consequences more appropriately. Minority administrators often use methods that connect well with students in minority-majority schools and enable students to creatively resolve issues.

Guarantee accountability

Promote gender equality in schools through data collection and information management. Disaggregated data collection and analysis based on age, sex and other relevant factors using the education management information system (EMIS) allow UNHCR in Chad to know the number of female and male school-aged children and their attendance rates, resulting in improved planning and response. For instance, participatory assessments have shown a low school attendance rate among young mothers and a high rate of absenteeism among female teachers with babies. UNHCR, to rectify this issue, introduced child care facilities in camp schools. As a result, young mothers improved their access to education and female teachers with young children were able to continue working.

Promote consistent training and mentoring.  For example, in Ecuador, to build capacity on SGBV prevention, UNHCR operation included 60 people from its field offices and partners in a year-long initiative of working with men. Consistent workshops were held every two or three months; the workshops entailed mentored participants to implement what they had learned. In addition, the operation has established collaboration with national LGBTI organisations.

Eradicate unlawful discriminatory practices. Delivery should focus on targeted change management aimed at building or increasing trust in the administrative and registrative services advancing its engagement with minority communities. This would further improve the quality of participation.

There is a need to incorporate Human rights into the framework which provides minorities the right to work. Discriminatory practices such as arbitrary or disproportionately frequent identity checks, arrests, detentions or harassment of persons belonging to minorities should be banned.

Guaranteeing independent oversight and accountability is crucial for upholding integrity, deterring misconduct and restoring or enhancing the confidence of the marginalised population into the schools. A long-term effort is needed to ensure that an adequate and independent oversight framework is put in place.

Promote regular reviewing of the policies and the legislations. Reviewing and amending legislation, policies, and regulations in adherence to international standards, as described by the United Nations, in order to ensure access to registration for all without discrimination. Putting measures in place to protect the integrity of civil registration records and prevent fraudulent registration of vital events

Protect minorities’ rights

Merely measuring equity in education is not enough. Systems of education also need to adopt equitable strategies involving the redistribution of education funding, allocation of teachers and resources, as well as targeted approaches to raising learning standards for those at risk of being left behind.

A strong emphasis on measuring equity in access and learning from the early years is needed so that initial inequalities can be identified and targeted as early as possible.

Advocate for governments and communities to change discriminatory national and customary laws and practices to ensure proper participation and representation is essential.

In order to have a more gender-responsive framework, the following should be kept in mind:

• Ensure all solutions programming integrate gender equality measures in a manner that is equal and inclusive of women and girls.
• Advocate with governments and build the capacity of UNHCR staff for strengthened implementation of procedures that are gender-sensitive and recognize gender-based persecution.
• Increase the access of women and girls to justice through legal assistance and advocacy for gender-equitable national legal systems and customary justice mechanisms.

In order to develop effective measures aimed at advancing minority rights, states are encouraged to collect comprehensive and disaggregated data with regard to persons belonging to minorities, which goes beyond employment data. Such data-gathering exercises should take place in a sensitive manner, proceeding through statistical or other operations on a voluntary basis, in accordance with international standards of personal data protection, as well as on the basis of their self-identification as members of groups concerned. Methods of collection of such data should be designed in close cooperation with minorities.

National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) – which should themselves be representative of the diversity in their respective societies – should consider putting into place a specific mechanism to address minority issues. As independent and autonomous institutions mandated to protect and promote human rights, they are of paramount importance and a crucial stakeholder which can address core protection issues with respect to minorities. NHRIs should monitor the number of complaints received from persons belonging to minorities and assess whether they are adequately aware of their rights and enjoy unlimited access to available mechanisms, with no fear of reprisals, and design their work plan as well as outreach and information strategy accordingly.

Civil society organisations, including minority organisations, should be a valued partner in guaranteeing the promotion and protection of minority rights within law enforcement and the judiciary. Civil society should continuously engage with relevant stakeholders in order to contribute towards, eradicating unlawful discriminatory practices and attitudes, and addressing accountability as well as access to justice issues more effectively. Civil society organizations should also cooperate closely with minority groups and consider developing dedicated initiatives focusing on the identified problem areas.

Promote follow-up processes. Inclusive follow-up processes with experts should be encouraged while involving minority and majority representatives and reflecting gender balance. Furthermore, all key actors, including national human rights institutions and civil society, should pay close attention to the rights of persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities in their work.