What We Do

UNRWA has been operating schools for Palestine refugees since the early 1950s, resulting in the provision of education to more than two million children to the present day. UNRWA now has 709 schools, 530,000 students, eight vocational training centres, and two pre-service teacher training institutions.

A key tenet of the UNRWA educational programme, and one which has been upheld since 1952, is to use the curriculum of the host countries. This not only promotes the inclusion of Palestine refugees in the social and economic fabric of the host countries by ensuring that students can take state examinations and qualify for secondary school but is also acknowledged as best practice in refugee education.

However, UNRWA also works to enrich the delivery of host country curricula to reflect our own educational approach which places a focus upon critical thinking, human rights education and adherence to UN values and principles. This is the topic of focus of the UNRWA Curriculum Framework. The Framework has been more recently complemented by the Rapid Review process, which is used when countries issue new textbooks. There are three main criteria used in the Rapid Review process: neutrality/bias, gender and age-appropriateness.

If any material in the textbook is found to be of potential concern, this is highlighted to teachers in a key document. Teachers are also provided with documents which enable them to facilitate discussions on critical thinking, with a view to encouraging the students to be aware of the perspectives of others and to be open-minded in discussing issues.

The UNRWA education team carried out substantive training on the Curriculum Framework (TCA) between 2014 and 2017. The TCA is an approach which helps teachers address any potential issues of concern identified in textbooks used in UNRWA schools. In 2017 alone, 1,760 staff members received training, whilst in 2018 and 2019 over 7,000 teachers were trained on the TCA.