GROUPS running refugee schools have turned to sponsorship programmes and providing food aid to the students’ families to ensure the children do not drop out.

Making sure that they are able continue their studies begins with ensuring that they don’t have to stop lessons to work, in order to help their families put food on the table, said Liew Tong Ngan, the Communications and Marketing Officer for Dignity for Children Foundation.

The refugee school run by Dignity observed a drop in pupils’ attendance since last year and decided to provide their families with basic necessities so that the children could continue attending classes.

“We provided groceries and personal hygiene items, school fee subsidies, and even rental assistance to most of our 1,600 pupils so they don’t have to drop out of school to earn wages to supplement their dwindling family income,” Liew told The Malaysian Insight.

The added help has seen an increase in pupil participation in online classes, he said.

“Attendance for online classes has increased from 40% in 2020 to an average of 80% for the whole of our primary programmes,” he said.

Dignity runs a community learning centre for the underprivileged urban poor, including refugees with classes from preschool to IGCSE ‘O’ Level and vocational skills.

As challenging as it was during the Covid-19 lockdowns last year, 48 pupils graduated with the school’s best IGCSE results to date, said Liew.

“We are really proud of our Class of 2020 secondary pupils who sat for their IGCSE examinations. With a special live programme, the pupils received extra guidance and tuition in a conducive environment to ensure that they are well prepared for the examination.”

Low digital literacy

Transitioning to online and blended learning was not easy but Dignity knew it was inevitable for the sake of the pupils.

“There is low digital literacy and lack of parental guidance; these were huge challenges,” he said.

Teachers had to guide pupils via WhatsApp individually during the initial months, and some pupils were not attending the online lessons due to the lack of connectivity and devices at home.

“We started an in-house education content production team and put up materials for our pupils to ensure engagement and productive learning for the preschool pupils.”

Last year, The Malaysian Insight reported that refugee schools were finding the going hard since reopening their doors after movement restrictions were eased.

A number of such schools in Kuala Lumpur were shut down, citing a lack of funds.

Liew said the threat of closure was still there due to the uncertain economic situation, which also affected refugee parents.

“The uncertain economic situation is causing parents a lot of anxiety – whether they have jobs or enough resources to keep their children in school and for us as an organisation, whether we have enough to pay our expenses,” he said.

The Save School for Refugees, meanwhile, has developed a sponsorship programme to keep their doors open after seeing a decline in payments by parents last year.

Its co-founders Isack Ibrahim and Omar Youcef asked donors to sponsor 61 pupils for a fixed period of time so that they could ease the burden of parents and pay for the school as well as the teachers’ salaries.

The Kuala Lumpur-based school, which offers informal primary-level education and literacy training, is currently able to last for another six months.

Before the pandemic, Isack said the school had over 200 pupils, but this dwindled to 127 last year due to parents losing their income and students not being able to participate in online classes.

“For the safety of our teachers and kids, we had to stop classes. We don’t know for how long. It took us some time to start online classes, as our pupils don’t have good internet access and devices to participate in the classes,” he said.

Funding challenge

Sustainable funding is now the biggest challenge as money is needed to ensure quality education, he added.

The Sahabat School, run by the Malaysian Social Research Institute (MSRI), meanwhile, teaches over 380 refugee and asylum-seeker children aged six to 18.

Its executive director, Ida Hariati, said a total of 150 pupils had received tablets and mobile data to continue their online lessons.

“We had some pupils dropping out because they did not have access to devices or data, however, that’s under control now,” she said.

She said the school is financially stable as they have been receiving support and funding from donors, but it remains a challenge as they may need extra funding to purchase devices and data for pupils and teachers.

As of January 2021, there are 178,710 refugees and asylum-seekers registered with UNHCR in Malaysia.

Some 68% of refugees and asylum-seekers are men, while 32% are women, and 45,630 are children below the age of 18. – April 16, 2021.