The Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a statement on Monday applauded Jordan’s education minister for instructing public schools to allow Syrian refugee children to register in the autumn term.
“Jordan’s Education Ministry has taken an important step by ordering schools to accept Syrian children this fall even if they don’t have their papers in order,” Bill Esveld, HRW Senior Children’s Rights Researcher said.
The organisation said that other plans include doubling the number of schools operating “double shifts” to create spaces for up to 50,000 more Syrian students.
To also establish a “catch-up” programme to reach another 25,000 children aged from 8 to 12.
Last week, the watchdog called on Jordan to change its procedures to allow more Syrian refugee children to enroll for the coming academic year.
It said that a third of school-aged Syrian children registered as refugees in the country were not in education.
According to the watchdog, more than one third of school-aged Syrian children registered with the UN refugee agency in Jordan.
It said that more than 80,000 out of 226,000 children were not in formal education during the last school year.
Syria’s conflict, which started in 2011 with peaceful protests against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, has spiraled into a multi-sided civil war that has cost at least a quarter of a million lives.
Some 4.8 million of Syria’s pre-war population of 22.4 million have fled abroad, with another 8.7 million predicted to be displaced inside the country in 2016, according to the UN refugee agency UNHCR.