We are sitting in a classroom and a student is talking about the leader of his country: “Would you say he is ethical, if he has made considerable progress in reducing poverty, but through a dictatorship model?” Some students shake their heads; others nod. They debate whether the ends of a military dictatorship justify the means. They reel through the leaders of their countries, each describing whether they meet the definition of an ethical leader.
This could be an international school anywhere in the world: but no, this class is being held in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya. In this camp, situated in the Northwest corner of Kenya, the name of which in Swahili literally means ‘nowhere’, twenty-five refugee youth are in a corrugated iron classroom in the 35 celsius degree heat. They are studying for the Amala Global Secondary Diploma (GSD), the first upper secondary-level programme and qualification designed with and for refugee youth aged 16-25. For all of them, this is a second chance to complete their secondary education.
A transformative vision
Amala has its roots in the international education community. My co-founder Mia and I started Amala in 2017 after working for UWC’s (United World Colleges) refugee scholarship initiative. We saw that for every UWC school or college scholarship awarded, 99 applicants would be turned away. Through asking these applicants what they would do instead, we discovered that those aged sixteen upwards had very few opportunities for further study. We decided to leverage our networks in the education space to create a programme specifically designed for refugee youth to complete their secondary education. The result was the Amala Global Secondary Diploma.
Between 2018 and 2020, with the pedagogical support of our partner school UWC South East Asia, we gathered over 150 international educators and displaced youth to design ten courses which formed the basis of the Diploma, ranging from “Peacebuilding” to “Maths for Change.” Building the curriculum from the ground up, we were able to centre the needs and aspirations of refugee youth in the process. Our consultations showed that our prospective students didn’t only want education to improve their own lives, but to also benefit their communities. We married these insights with the findings of international education frameworks such as OECD and UNESCO to create an education model that focuses on the development of student agency.
Obstacles and opportunities
The lack of trained teachers is a significant barrier to quality education in refugee contexts. Responding to this, we offer ‘on the job’ training to our GSD educators in the form of our tailored development programme. This means we can recruit host community and refugee youth, including GSD alumni, to deliver our curriculum. These truly are the perfect candidates for the job: their shared background with the students enables them to adeptly contextualise the learning to the students’ needs.
Assessment was another hurdle to clear. For the sake of our students’ learning and wellbeing, we knew that we wanted to move away from the traditional model of a high-stakes final examination. Our competency-based model allows students to draw upon both their classroom and real-world experiences as evidence of their learning. The Mastery Transcript makes our students’ transcripts digital and portable. We are also part of a broader movement in international education, the Coalition to Honour All Learning, which aims to find better metrics to measure student success.
Together, these components – the curriculum, assessment model and educator training approach – form our transformative education model. It is an ecosystem of people, relationships and experiences that nurtures the potential and power of learners, leading to significant shifts in their abilities and mindsets to positively impact their own lives and the world around them.
Photo: Amala Education
Sustained success and international recognition
Globally, only 7% of youth have access to higher education; two years on from graduation, 40% of our GSD alumni are accessing higher education opportunities. But it doesn’t stop there: our alumni are becoming entrepreneurs, social innovators, and leaders of their communities. They are also sought after by international agencies for internships and jobs. In Kakuma, an independent study found that our alumni were three times more likely than a control group to have access to educational and livelihood opportunities. Evidently, the transformative education model is working, and we are proud to say that over 400 students have now participated in the GSD in Kakuma Camp, Kenya, as well as in Amman, Jordan.
As of February 2024, the Amala GSD is an education programme that has been accredited by two of the most well-respected agencies in international education: Council of Internationals Schools (CIS) and New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC). This significant step pronounced Amala as the first organisation working in a refugee context to have its education benchmarked with international standards and practices. Since becoming accredited, higher education institutions are more readily admitting our alumni, and we have seen increased interest in partners wanting to work with us in countries including Malaysia, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
“Students didn’t only want education to improve their own lives, but to also benefit their communities.”
Extending our reach
Our mission continues. When Mia and I founded Amala, we set out to create a world-class education for refugee youth in low-resource settings. Our challenge now is making this a scalable proposition. When we started Amala, over 60 million people were displaced. Today, that number has doubled, and we are morally compelled to expand our efforts and impact to match the growing need for refugee education.
In the coming years, we will focus on achieving equivalency in education and building wider recognition to ensure that our students’ powerful qualifications are fully validated. We are also focusing on extending our connections within the international schools community, and this includes our development of a programme to encourage all students to become changemakers for refugee education. We are excited to embark on this next stage of our journey. I hope that our story inspires other educational innovators looking to ensure that children and young people can access the education they deserve.
Practical tips for school leaders
- Develop a strong learning model to help you stay true to your mission and create innovation.
- Involve students and educators in inclusive curriculum design hackathons.
- Consider long-term student outcomes (e.g. career aspirations) and use this to develop programme design and pathway support.
- Create educator development programmes that build on the lived experience and strengths of those who understand the context of what it means to be a refugee or displaced person.
- Leverage the resources and talents of school leaders and practitioners within The Mastery Transcript Consortium. This helped us to develop our competency-based assessment model aligned with the MTC tool.
Are you interested in being part of Amala’s Changemaker for Refugee Education Community? Find out more by registering your interest with Amala’s Fundraising Coordinator Hannah Barnes.
Polly Akhurst is the Co-founder and Co-executive Director of Amala Education.
