Educational Needs and Educational Deprivation of Syrian Refugee Children in Jordanian ‘Random Camps’: ‘It’s Hard to Think about the Future of Tomorrow, if We Don’t Have Enough to Eat Today’

When thousands of Syrian families seeking help fled to Jordan at the beginning of the Syrian Crisis in March 2011, the Jordanian government set up camps to accommodate the displaced people. Some of the Syrian refugees are supported by humanitarian organizations, some have since received work permits. On the other hand, others are trying to find work in the informal sector, particularly in agriculture. Thus, numerous settlements, so-called random camps, have sprung up on the outskirts of the farms in rural Jordan, where Syrian families are housed during the harvest season (Perosino, 2023). The following article deals with such settlements. More specifically, it deals with the following: school dropouts from Syrian agricultural worker families, the needs and problems of the school-age children living there, gaps in the Jordanian education system, and answers as to how these children can continue to be enabled to attend school regularly.

Thus, an ethnographic study was conducted in rural areas. Focus group discussions were held with parents from two irregular settlements, and qualitative interviews were conducted with experts from the Ministry of Education and Humanitarian Organizations. The study concludes that school dropouts among Syrian children of agricultural workers cannot be explained solely by poverty and child labor, but must be considered through the rural school and educational system that does not correspond to the mobile way of life of the Syrian agricultural worker families. This inevitably leads to the exclusion of children from school attendance.