Efforts to secure inclusive and equitable education for all have prompted calls for greater engagement by the private sector, asserting that businesses and foundations can play significant roles as partners in achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4). 

Non-formal education (NFE) programs offer an alternative to formal education for out-of-school children, adolescents, and youth, and for learners for whom the formal education system is not a good fit, providing a flexible, responsive education that is better suited to the unique circumstances of these groups. However, NFE programming in crisis and conflict settings currently varies widely in its content, delivery modalities, educational quality, the certification provided upon completion of the program (or lack thereof), and target populations. 

Drawing from research and experience on previous infectious disease outbreaks and an emergent body of work from the current COVID-19 pandemic, this report highlights the primarily negative effects resulting from the combination of sudden school closures and restricted access to and availability of services, social networks, and other protective facilities for children and young people living in crisis-affected contexts. The consequences of school closures on education and child protection can be categorized into three principal areas:

This policy paper is for EiE sector donors, both in humanitarian and protracted crisis contexts, national governments and humanitarian and development agencies. It provides guidance on how to increase and improve the measurement of holistic learning outcomes for crisis-affected learners. 

This practitioner-oriented publication is designed as a living document that will be updated in response to changes in the learning and wellbeing needs of children, adolescents, youth, teachers, caregivers and other education personnel affected by COVID-19.

The INEE Reference Guide on External Education Financing was developed by the INEE Working Group on Education and Fragility in response to requests from education specialists for an easily accessible description of the different types of external assistance for education. In particular, it responds to recommendations made by participants at the 2008 INEE Policy Roundtable on Education Finance in States Affected by Fragility.

Since the introduction of the INEE Minimum Standards (INEE MS), a range of organizations and individuals have used them as a framework for their work, whether to guide the response planning in acute emergencies or to mon­itor and evaluate programs being delivered. Organizations may claim they are either working under or meeting the INEE MS. However without associated indicators it has not yet been possible to measure an organization’s or program’s alignment with the INEE MS.

This report is aimed at members of the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), which includes a broad range of humanitarian, development, government, and civil society actors who are working to ensure that all individuals have the right to a quality, safe, relevant, and equitable education. The purpose of the report is to demystify the concept of humanitarian-development coherence and to propose a set of actions and recommendations to strengthen such coherence in the education sector.

While there already are a number of agency-specific professional development models for the sector, they are not integrated into a wider, systematic framework. INEE has therefore developed the Education in Emergencies Competency Framework (EiE CF), grounded in the INEE Minimum Standards, to articulate a common set of competencies.

This report presents learning and recommendations emerging from the Global Partners Project (GPP), an initiative to strengthen education in emergencies (EiE) coordination. The GPP brought the Global Education Cluster (GEC), the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), and the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) together, funded by Education Cannot Wait (ECW), to undertake a comprehensive review of coordination, planning, and response structures for EiE.