Education in Emergencies

Children and families affected by emergencies; host schools and communities; government and nonprofit humanitarian partners

A child who falls behind in the early grades rarely catches up on their own. The gap widens quietly, year over year, until it becomes the explanation for everything that follows. Our partnership with UNICEF exists to interrupt that sequence.

In eight partner schools we run remedial classes for students who have fallen behind grade level, delivered by their own teachers rather than outside tutors, with continuous mentoring and professional development so that the capability stays in the school after we leave. We assess students diagnostically at entry and summatively at exit, so that progress is measured rather than asserted. And we bring parents into the process directly, through monitoring and structured feedback.

902 students enrolled in remedial classes. 64 teachers mentored. 646 students assessed and 654 parents engaged. Students in the programme improved literacy by 37% and numeracy by 52%. These are not marginal gains. They tell us the model genuinely closes learning gaps rather than slowing their growth.

Teacher satisfaction reached 98%, parent satisfaction 93%, and principal satisfaction 100%. Every principal confirmed a positive impact on academic achievement. 96% of parents observed increased motivation in their child. And 97% of teachers told us the remedial methodology is a more effective alternative to traditional after-school programmes, a judgement from the people with the least reason to flatter a new method and the most experience of the old one.

Our "Hello School" programme prepares roughly 160 incoming students across eight schools for the transition into first grade, so that the gap we work to close later has less chance to open in the first place.

With UNICEF we have established an Education in Emergencies roster of 53 trained coordinators and signed a contingency agreement, positioning Teach For Armenia as a standing partner when educational needs arise in a crisis. We trained 21 Alumni-Ambassadors (i.e. graduates of Teach For Armenia's National Leadership Program) and 9 in-service teachers from Syunik across three days covering Education in Emergencies, Mental Health and Psychosocial Support, and social-emotional learning in emergency settings. And we developed and printed a Social-Emotional Learning in Emergencies toolkit of eight ready-to-use sessions, designed to be opened and taught on the day it is needed. Readiness is not a document; it is a trained person with a usable tool.

Our partnership with the National Center for Development of Education and Innovation is now established, and through it the core components of the remedial education model are being institutionalised, moving from a programme we deliver to a practice the system holds. The Ministry has taken up our school-preparedness methodology for its summer classes, drawing on the approach and the implementation experience we built in partner schools.

This is the whole point of the work. Not to run a programme indefinitely, but to build something good enough that the institutions responsible for every child in Armenia want to run it themselves.