Norwegian Refugee Council Curriculum Development Consultancy in Jordan, April to June 2017
Fumiyo Kagawa and David Selby, Sustainability Frontiers UK are undertaking a three-month (April to June 2017) curriculum development consultancy on behalf of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) in Jordan.
NRC offers informal education for children and youth in Zaatari and Azraq refugee camps in Jordan as well as education projects to support Syrian refugee children in host communities in northern Jordan. NRC camp programs support the learning of children aged 6-15 who are in school but at risk of dropping out as well as those who remain out of school. The camp education program is designed to support the Syrian children so they can better access and stay in school and achieve well academically. The host community program offers remedial learning for both refugee and host community children with an accent upon accelerated learning that enables the child to catch up on lost years of schooling, as well as supporting those who are at risk of dropping out. It covers literacy and numeracy, life skills, psychosocial wellbeing, learning for social cohesion and recreational activities.
The primary object of this desk-based and field-based consultancy is to design and develop a coherent package of quality learning and teaching materials for a two-month (July and August) summer school program, collaborating with relevant stakeholders. The program will be for refugee and host community children needing remedial and accelerated learning support. A first step will be to conduct a review of materials currently available for the summer school program and to consult with stakeholders with experience of past summer camps – principals, teachers, student participants and NRC officers – to understand the context and identify needs. For these purposes, Fumiyo will be visiting Jordan in the first half of May 2017.
The learning package will include:
- Remedial/academic lessons and learning materials for Arabic, English and Mathematics classes for three levels: level 1 (grades 1 and 2); level 2 (grades 3 and 4) and level 3 (grades 5 and 6)
- Art, social and life skills materials for the same three levels
- A toolkit to foster parental engagement with the summer schools
- A toolkit of recreational activities
- Tools for placement of children at the appropriate summer school level and for measuring learning outcomes
- A five-day teacher training package
- A training-the-trainer package
- A user guide for NRC staff, principals and teachers.
Fumiyo and David will visit Jordan towards the end of June 2017 to present the materials to NRC colleagues and to facilitate a training event.
A further aspect of the consultancy will be an analysis of curriculum and learning/teaching materials materials used in the education program used in the two camps for adolescents making recommendations for addressing gaps. A report will be presented to NRC.