Inclusive education and work permits: Transforming lives of Syrian refugees in Jordan
An inclusive education policy increased school enrolment rates among Syrian refugees and the introduction of work permits increased the value of educational attainment, encouraging students to stay in school longer.
Most of the world’s 35.3 million refugees live in protracted displacement for an average duration of average duration of 10-26 years. Around 40% of refugees are under the age of 18, compared to 30% of the global population.
Displacement is a major traumatic and disruptive event. Among many young refugees, it interrupts education, which can result in lowered educational attainment and performance.
Since future job prospects are often tied to educational attainment, ensuring refugee youths receive education in their host communities is a policy priority for long-run integration efforts.
Studying Syrian refugees’ education decisions and improved access to labour market
I study the education decisions of Syrian refugees in Jordan over time to capture the importance of integration efforts and a policy change that improved Syrian refugees’ access to the Jordan labour market.
Between the beginning of 2012 and the end of 2013, UNHCR registered roughly 585,000 Syrian refugees entering Jordan. That number increased to 618,5000 refugees by the end of 2014.
In a two-year period, Jordan’s population of then 6.5 million endured a near 10% increase due to this refugee wave. Moreover, the Syrian refugee population in Jordan was noticeably young—with 48% under the age of 15.
Outcomes of Jordan’s progressive and inclusive education policy
Increasing enrolment rates among Syrian refugees
Jordan enacted a progressive education policy in response to the Syrian refugee crisis. Beginning in 2012, Jordan allowed refugees to freely enrol in local public schools. According to the Jordanian Ministry of Education estimates, the number of Syrian refugees enrolled in Jordanian public schools increased from 558 to 108,913 students from the 2012-2013 academic year to the following year.
Figure 1 below shows the recovery of enrolment rates of Syrian refugees over time after the initial disruption of displacement. However, despite having equal access to schools, Syrian refugees still have lower enrolment rates in secondary education than their Jordanian counterparts.
Figure 1: The recovery of school enrolment rates of Syrian refugees over time after displacement
Slowly increasing educational attainment
Syrian refugees’ lower enrolment rates unsurprisingly translate into lower educational attainment relative to their Jordanian peers. To understand the origin of this gap in educational attainment, I compare the educational attainment of individuals between 22-25 years of age over time to determine whether education interruptions caused by displacement had lasting impacts on the educational attainment of Syrian refugees.
Before the Syrian Civil War in 2012, Syrian refugees that would have completed their education in Syria (were between the ages of 22-25 in 2011) had nearly four years less education than their Jordanian counterparts.
Figure 2 plots the years of education of 22-25-year-olds over time. It appears that Syrian refugees’ lower levels of education are not due to displacement-driven interruptions but rather a pre-war gap between Syrians and Jordanians that is slowly closing over time.
Figure 2: Educational attainment among 22-25-year-olds Jordanians and Syrians from 2011-2020
Impact of issuing work permits to Syrian refugees
Compared to its inclusive education policy, Jordan maintained its historical protectionist labour market policy, which barred refugees from the right to work. In February 2016, under pressure from the international community, the government of Jordan signed the Jordan Compact, a novel approach to managing protracted refugee displacement issuing work permits to Syrian refugees.
Improvement in enrolment rates
Since both Syrian and Jordanian women have very low labour force participation rates, Syrian girls’ education decisions should not change in response to the work permit scheme. Thus, Syrian girls’ education decisions can be used as a benchmark to measure how Syrian boys respond to the policy change.
In Figure 3, the enrolment gap within Syrian refugees, between girls and boys, has closed substantially since the introduction of the work permit scheme. For example, before work permits, over 45% of 15-year-old Syrian girls were enrolled in school compared to less than 35% of 15-year-old Syrian boys.
After work permits, likely due to improvements in refugee integration, enrolment rates improved for both girls and boys. However, the enrolment gap between girls and boys notably shrunk by over 50%.
The closing gap suggests that refugee boys may be under less pressure to work at younger ages and can stay enrolled in secondary school at higher rates.
Figure 3: Enrolment rates among Syrian girls and boys, before and after the introduction of work permits
Increase in the value of education
How do these disparities in education translate to the labour market? Both before and after the work permit scheme, male Syrian refugees of secondary school age (15-18) are much more likely to work than young Jordanians.
However, given the substantial increase (around 10%) in employment rates of male Syrian refugees that are above 18 years old, the fact that there is no corresponding increase among 15-18 year-olds may suggest that the work permit scheme has increased the value of education in terms of future job prospects.
Figure 4: Employment rates of young Syrian and Jordanian men
Comparatively, the work permits have little effect on Syrian young women. Employment rates stay below 10% for Syrian women both before and after the work permit scheme is introduced.
This further suggests that the improvements in Syrian girls’ education (in Figure 3) are not driven by changes in the returns to education on the labour market, but rather signal integration of refugees into Jordanian society.
Inclusive education policy and the introduction of work permits enabled refugee integration
Providing access to the Jordanian education system has benefited Syrian refugees. It has improved their school enrolment rates and begun to close the educational attainment gap that existed between Jordanians and Syrian refugees.
Introduction of work permits has improved access to the labour markets and seemed to increase the returns to education. Ongoing research work aims to causally identify these effects and how they might enable refugee integration.