This year’s World Refugee Day is an opportunity to stand in solidarity with refugees and their communities around the world. For the 14.8 million school-aged refugees around the world today, many of them have told us – they prioritise education. Their quality education hinges on one crucial factor: their teachers. Refugee teachers are the cornerstones of their communities, working to meet not just the educational, but also social, emotional and physical needs of their students.
“I was motivated to become a teacher by my fellow teachers; the way they love children, the way they were committed to their work,” says Beatrice*, a refugee teacher in Uganda.
Across East Africa, many of those teaching refugee learners are refugees themselves, yet they face enormous barriers to becoming certified educators. From missing documentation and restrictive policies to limited access to training, refugee teachers often struggle for recognition. Female teachers, in particular, are underrepresented, despite their critical role in supporting girls’ education and serving as role models in communities.
Today, Save the Children is proud to launch a new report, supported by the LEGO Foundation, that explores pathways to certification for refugee teachers in East Africa. This research shines a light on the challenges they face, promising practices emerging in the region, and urgent opportunities for action. Because when we invest in teachers, we invest in children, and we unlock a future where every child can learn, thrive, and lead change in their communities.
Who Are Refugee Teachers and What Does It Mean to Be ‘Qualified’?
Refugee teachers are a diverse group. Some hold formal teaching degrees from their home countries; others have partial training or years of classroom experience but lack official certification. Many are just starting their teaching journeys, working as assistants or volunteers, often while pursuing qualifications.
Unfortunately, data on refugee teachers and their qualifications remains scarce. While host countries are increasing their efforts to track refugee learners, their teachers are less visible. Most refugee teachers are hired by NGOs and paid through incentives rather than formal contracts or national payrolls, complicating efforts to collect consistent data.
What we do know is stark: across East Africa, many refugee teachers remain uncertified, underpaid, and excluded from professional recognition, even when they hold degrees from host country universities. Without certification pathways, their skills go unrecognised and uninvested in, and dropout is high.
“I have the same degree as Kenyan teachers, but because I am a refugee, I am not recognised,” says Abdullahi Khalif Abdi, a refugee teacher and refugee-led organisation founder in Kenya.
Recognition and certification of refugee teachers are not just issues of fairness - they are essential steps to delivering quality education for every child, everywhere. For refugee teachers to be part of the solution to the global learning crisis, they must be recognised not as temporary stopgaps but as skilled professionals. It’s time to break down barriers and build clear, sustainable pathways to inclusion.
What is the policy environment for refugee teachers?
Certification remains out of reach for many refugee teachers in East Africa due to restrictive labour laws, high unemployment, and parallel education systems. While most countries legally uphold refugees’ right to education, far fewer guarantee refugees the right to work or freedom of movement, both essential for refugee teachers to access and utilise qualifications. Whilst political will for education inclusion is more favourable, our research finds that national teacher recruitment, payrolls, and professional development often exclude them.
However, there are transformative shifts on the horizon. Commitments have grown; the Global Refugee Forum has seen pledges for refugee teachers more than double since 2019. Regionally, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) has established the Djibouti Declaration and a Regional Qualifications Framework aimed at supporting teacher certification and mobility across borders. The African Union’s African Teacher Qualification Framework promotes standardisation of teacher qualifications across countries. Examples of refugees accessing certified teaching qualifications – and just how life-changing it can be - are beginning to emerge.
Persisting through family commitments, illness and having aged out of scholarship support, Samuel*, a refugee teacher in Uganda gained his teaching qualifications and had them officially recognised. He was able to build his home and buy some livestock to provide for his family. Now he uses his teaching skills to ensure his students are learning, putting them in groups to share ideas and reinforce their knowledge. His hope is to equip his students so that they can support themselves for their future lives to come.
What Are the Pathways to Certification as a Qualified Refugee Teacher?
Given this momentum, our report seeks to understand potentials to build on promising practice and identifies six pathways, each with unique opportunities and challenges:
- Full Access to National Training: Refugees enrol in official host country teacher education programmes.
- Equivalency Recognition: Refugee teachers’ qualifications from their home countries are evaluated and recognised through national qualifications frameworks.
- Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL): RPL helps validate skills and experience through self-reporting and assessment, rather than requiring formal documentation.
- Regularisation of cohorts of practising teachers: Bridging courses help fill educational gaps and align refugee teachers’ qualifications with host country standards.
- Partnerships with Teacher Education Centres: Collaborations between NGOs and national teaching training institutions provide training and sometimes certification.
- Non-Governmental Training: NGO-led and online professional development build teaching skills, with a strong emphasis in specific skills for crisis contexts.
Together, these pathways represent vital steps to unlock refugee teachers’ potential, enhance education for displaced children, and build inclusive systems where all teachers are valued professionals. The report maps examples of these pathways in action and pinpoints specific challenges and opportunities to their implementation at a national level.
Encouraging examples are emerging that enable these pathways to be equitably accessed and to lead to formal certification outcomes: satellite training centres, regional qualifications frameworks, and even new work exploring the potential of micro-credentialling in teacher certification.
Certification is not just a technical hurdle; it requires a systems strengthening approach. From policy reform and sustainable financing to better data and coordination, action is needed at every level.
Recommendations: Supporting Refugee Teachers for Quality Education
“If I was recognised as a teacher, many things would change in my life. My welfare alone would change. To my students, I would be providing quality education to them. I would be even giving them first-hand information and using computers to elaborate more points of my teaching,” Beatrice tells us.
Despite the challenges, there is strong political will to include refugee teachers in national systems expressed through the IGAD Djibouti Declaration and certification is a critical foundation of bringing these commitments into action.
To achieve this, we urge all stakeholders to adopt the five P’s:
- Prioritise refugee teachers in education responses to ensure they get the qualifications they need to teach children effectively
- Plan for certification, in order to build up qualification opportunities, using data to tailor pathways that address local needs, gender, and diversity, and align with national and regional qualification frameworks.
- Partner across governments, NGOs, UN agencies, and funders to expand flexible, government-recognised certification pathways that support teachers balancing work and study, including school-based and micro-credential options.
- Ensure Participation of refugee teachers in designing solutions that match their needs, experience and aspirations.
- Incentivise and recognise teacher experience and/or qualification through Pay.
We call on UNHCR, governments, donors, and education partners to act now. Investing in refugee teachers is investing in children’s futures, resilience, and the promise of inclusive, quality education for all.
On this World Refugee Day, let us champion refugee teachers - not only as educators but as agents of change and hope for displaced children and their communities. Together, we can build pathways that secure their futures and those of millions of refugee learners across East Africa and beyond.
Read the full report, Unlocking Potential: Enhancing teacher certification pathways for refugees in East Africa, here.
Get in touch to discuss further on implementing the recommendations of this policy report: [email protected] .
Note: names with an * have been changed to protect their identity.
