Education and Fragility Desktop Study
Shaping the Focus of the Working Group: CERG Desktop Study on Education and Fragility
In early 2008, the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) commissioned a team of researchers from Oxford University’s Conflict and Education Research Group (CERG) to carry out a desktop study that would investigate the effects of education on fragility. The central question asked was: How can provision of quality education mitigate fragility and contribute to peace building, peace dividends, state building, the resilience of institutions and state stabilization?
Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, the research confirmed that education does have the potential to mitigate fragility. Specific findings from the research include:
- State educational provision is a necessary condition for overcoming fragility.
- Education can enhance stability by contributing to social cohesion.
- Secondary education is an effective contribution to overcoming fragility.
- Education can measurably reduce the risk of civil unrest and violent conflict.
- The perception of inadequate educational service often becomes a grievance that exacerbates fragility.
- Education systems can be a prime site of corruption and a suitable place to establish transparency.
- Political manipulation of educational provision and content may increase fragility.
- Education is highly desired by populations affected by fragility.
- Peace education can have positive effects on students’ attitudes.
The desk study confirmed that while education can mitigate fragility, considerable gaps in research and understandings of the effect of education on fragility remain; there is a need for increased empirical evidence on which to develop effective education strategies and programming. Based on the findings of this research, the Oxford CERG team put forth a number of recommendations including:
Ensure more, deepened and diversified research on education and fragility
- Encourage the collection of reliable education data, including for contexts of fragility other than conflict and with a widened geographical scope.
- Seek evidence on the long-term micro-level effects of education on fragility.
- Lobby for the inclusion of an education component into research on fragility conducted by third parties and for building research into large-scale interventions in fragile (particularly post-conflict) contexts.
Focus on youth by pushing beyond primary education
- Put a strong emphasis on strategies for post-primary education, including vocational training and secondary education. Universal primary education alone is not enough to alleviate fragility; nearly all the channels through which education can be found to mitigate fragility require higher levels of schooling.
Continue to work on integrating education with other sectors
- Enhance cross-sectoral linkages by integrating education with other sectors as educational interventions and investments cannot work in isolation at either the individual or macro-level.
Actively shape the discourse on education and fragility among donors
- Continue to make the case for a normative, rights-based approach that does not solely demand quantitative empirical evidence as a basis for best practice.
- Balance advocacy with realistic expectations regarding education’s ability to reduce fragility.
Please see here for the list of relevant ongoing research developed by CERG.
Please see here for the updated list of key resources provided by CERG.
