The Accelerated Access Initiative to Quality Formal Education for Syrian Refugee Children (AAI). A look back and forward. AAI Transition Workshop Report

Since the London Conference in February 2016, the international community has supported the Government of Jordan in its response to the Syrian crisis by channelling their assistance and commitments within the framework of the Jordan Response Plan. As part of the Jordan Response Plan, the Ministry of Education launched the ‘Accelerating Access to Quality Formal Education for Syrian Refugee Children’ (AAI) whose main objective, over the last three years, has been to increase access to formal education for Syrian refugee children without lowering the quality of education for Jordanian children. The initiative has been supported by a number of international donors and has been funded through on-budget and off-budget aid modalities over the period 2016-2019, and has now been extended until 2020. Following the donor- supported AAI plan, the Ministry of Education has ensured the enrolment in formal education of approximately 134,000 Syrian refugee children between 2016 and 2019. To inform the next phase of support after 2020, a research report was commissioned in May 2019. The report titled ‘The Accelerated Access Initiative to Quality Formal Education for Syrian Refugee Children (AAI). Lessons learned, challenges and the way forward’ (hereafter Main Report) aimed to assess donors’ aid modalities to the AAI, capture lessons learned regarding the period 2016-2019 and map out intentions and preferences of stakeholders for the next phase of aid programming. This included assessing impact against objectives, donor coordination structures, identifying challenges, dilemmas and complementarities in donors’ support as well as capture constraints and preferences for the next phase. The report was based on an in-depth literature review on aid modalities and semi-structured interviews with AAI donors, Ministry of Education (MoE) officials and other educational stakeholders during the period May 28 – June 20 (see Annex 4, main report). To validate and triangulate the findings of the main report, as well as to bring all stakeholders around the same table, an ‘AAI Transition Workshop’ was organized at the Canadian Embassy on June 19, 2019. The present report (hereafter Workshop Report) summarises the presentations and discussions during the one-day workshop. The workshop report should be seen as an output of the main report. While it confirms the findings of the main report, it adds more nuance and complexity to some of the key challenges, commonalities and dilemmas that were identified in the main report.