Executive Summary- Third edition:

The student and his family are regarded a main pillar in fulfilling the process of integrating students in the Turkish schools. This paper focused on a group of internal and familial factors that might enhance or hinder this process and the study deduced a group of results:

Regarding the role of family in enhancing or hindering the integration efforts:

• The parents of the Syrian students don’t show enough interest in following the educational progress of the student and his compliance with his duties or interaction with his teacher in the same level of following the social problems of the student within school especially with his peers.
• Many teachers regarded that 75% of the Syrian students don’t get proper educational follow-up by their families and they don’t receive any care whether regarding behavioral directing or in providing psychological and health care.
• 74% of the parents indicated that they don’t communicate with the teachers in a good way and 62% of them don’t attending parents’ meetings and this is for many reasons, like: Being busy at work, hardships in communication and difference in awareness level and follow-up for the student.
• 63% of the parents regarded the general atmosphere of the school changed to the worst with the increase of incitement campaigns compared to the previous years. While 60% of the parents indicated their personal affection and change of mental impressions about the Turkish society in general as 43% of them think that their children got affected by their negative impressions towards the Turkish people as well.
• Direct interviews with students demonstrated that 37% of them live in a completely closed familial environments where they don’t do any social activity outside the borders of the school with their peers whether from Syrians or the Turkish and thus 63% of the children of these closed environments were completely unable to form any friendships with their Turkish peers.
• Direct interviews with students demonstrated that 65% of Syrian student live in a familial environments that are closed to the Turkish society and thus 71% of the children of these environments were completely unable to form friendships with their Turkish peers.
• A lot of Syrian families show big concerns regarding losing their children for their identity in the first place and for their Arabic language in the second place as these concerns appeared to be on of the indirect factors for rejecting integration and not accepting the existence of their children in schools.

Regarding the role of the student:

• The language factor was clear as a main factor in forming friendships with the Turkish peers but it wasn’t crucial as 33% of the students were able to overcome the language barriers and form friendships with their Turkish peers despite their low or medium language levels while some students were unable to form friendships despite bypassing the language problems.
• The acceptance for the idea of moving to a Turkish school by the students had a clear effect in fulfilling the success of integration process as many students that weren’t ready for this step showed refusal and internal rejection for this process especially in old ages and this because of their feeling of being obliged to go through this experience and for their fear from the difficulties they might face and also the deterioration of this educational level.
• 20% of the parents indicated that their children suffer from previous psychological problems that are stated in involuntary bed-wetting, introversion, isolation and extravagant fear as well as repeated nightmares and they referred that their children didn’t receive any help in this regard or they don’t know which side provide such type of services or psychological assistance.

And regarding the social problems with the Turkish peers:

• 42% of the Syrian students faced medium or severe exclusion cases that were repeated at least for 3 times while 38% of the Arab students faced the same situation as well. In addition to that, cases of social exclusion appeared among the Syrian students towards other Syrian students and it reached 26% but the phenomenon of social exclusion was clearer from the side of the Turkish students.
• One from every five Syrian students experienced medium social exclusion from his Turkish peers while one from every four Arab students went through similar experience.
• One from every four Syrian students experienced severe exclusion that was repeated for more than 6 times while one from every eight Arab students went through similar experience.
• The results show that the social exclusion cases faced by Syrian and Arab students didn’t raise to be “bullying cases” but they were closer to public social rejection cases that spread clearly and got repeated by different groups. However, it was transformed for some students and groups into “bullying case” that targeted the same student for repeated times.
• 68% of the students faced a verbal attack case for being Syrians that was repeated at least once or twice asking them to leave Turkey, 24% of them faced this attack more repeatedly and many of Arab non-Syrian students faced them attack and this is because the Turkish students regard any one speaks Arabic as a Syrian.
• 68% of the students face unintended violence or what can be called “Harsh play” at least once, among them 34% faced this for more than 3 times and it sometimes hospitalized 6% of the students to receive treatment.
• 51% of the students faced intended physical harm or violence for at least once for being Syrians, among them 14% faced the same situation in a repeated manner that exceeded 6 times and this led to a clear congestion in the Syrian families resulted from having their children beaten and for not having clear interest or interaction from the teachers or the management to control this phenomenon and this was interpreted as targeting the Syrian existence not as a general problem in most of the schools.
• Some schools lacked the required mechanisms to treat the offense and verbal bullying cases that targeted many Syrian students and this led to the appearance of what is called “bullying infection” and it means: Imitating or conforming to the bullying groups by other students to stay away from their harm and this led to a wide spread for the phenomenon.
• 46% of the parents indicated that their students insistently refused to go to school for at least one time which 2% of the students have completely refrained from school for not being able to adapt or for getting affect by some violence cases and the effect of that on their psychological state.

Regarding the factors that helped students to succeed or fail in integration:

• 37% of the students could succeed in integration inside Turkish schools while the integration experiences are still tripped for 14% of them as they suffer from some accepted problems, while 49% of the students failed to periodically integrate because of the existence of many linguistic, social or personal barriers.
• One of the most important factors that helped the students to succeed in integration is their existence in an open familial environments that have activities and relations with their surrounding Turkish and Syrian societies as well as a positive school environment- especially during the first year of joining Turkish schools- that is represented in the existence of an understanding and supporting teacher that is able to give interest and encouragement for th student as well as the existence of Turkish peers that weren’t affected by the negative mental impressions.
• One of the most important factors that helped the student to fulfill the success of the integration process is owning social skills and psychological flexibility by the student himself that enable him to overcome any hardships or annoying accidents as well as being free from any negative mental impressions and being previously psychologically prepared to accept the idea of moving to a new school environment that have different language and culture.
• The chance of integration success was higher for the students of primary stage or th students that entered Turkish schools in primary stage and this success participated in enhancing positive impressions about the Turkish society for these students while the chances of integration failure was higher in preparatory stage especially in its final grades and this failure led to form negative impression and generalizing a wrong image about the Turkish society for these students.
• The ability of the student to succeed in education had a big effect in attracting more Turkish friends and reaching the appreciation and respect of the teacher and the management.
• One of the most important common factors between the cases that failed in integration is the existence of the student in a socially closed familial environment that doesn’t have any social activities with the Syrian or the Turkish societies as the majority of the closed families towards the Turkish society or those that have negative impressions about it were more likely to have their children failed in integration at schools.
• The factor of getting exposed to one of bullying shapes- especially physical bullying- had a clear effect in failing or hindering the integration process as almost 50% of the students that failed in integration face severe cases of bullying with any of its shapes.
• The first impressions of the student during his first year affected the course of integration process in all its stages as negative impressions in the first year led to tripping the integration experience and slowing its progress and vice versa.
• The results show that most of the students that go through tripping experiences live in familial gatherings that are open to some extent and have social relationships with the Syrians but these familial gatherings showed clear closure for the Turkish society.

Recommendations:

In the light of the foregoing, regarding the subject of the study “Social integration for the Syrian students with the Turkish students in their school communities” and in an attempt from us to find some solutions, we provide a group of recommendations divided as follows:

Recommendations to enhance linguistic skills for the students: 

Recommendations directed to decision makers and those who are concerned in the integration process in the Turkish schools:

• Reconsidering the idea of isolating Syrian students from their Turkish peers and moving them to separate remedial classes to learn language as well as making integration classes specialized in enhancing linguistic abilities in the evening period or during the vacations with a focus on the summer vacation.
• Reconsidering the Turkish language curricula that are being taught to the students and supporting them with additions that might assist the student to understand school specialized terms.
• Focusing on the other subjects beside the Turkish language in the integration classes like maths, sciences and social studies and to make these subjects in Turkish language especially in preparatory and secondary stages.
• Qualifying Turkish teachers with the skills of teaching Turkish language for foreigners before allowing them to teach in integration classes as well as securing assistants from Syrian teachers to attend with them inside classes to help them organize students and following their progress after passing courses in this field.
• To add psychological support classes to the integration classes led by specialized Syrian and Turkish teachers and to provide joint activities between the students of these classes with their Turkish peers especially in the field of sports and arts or forming a varied teams that include the two parties to create a state of mandatory interaction that doesn’t necessarily rely on academic knowledge or Turkish language like sports and arts activities, etc.
• Holding special course for open education students to enable the students to left school to continue their education.
• Benefiting from the Syrian teachers in the official educational process especially in the specializations of Arabic language, Holy Quran and English language and introducing the Syrian teacher as an equal to the Turkish teacher as this can correct the image of the Syrians in the minds of the students for the moral position of the teacher and also having the Syrian teacher in an effective position in the school gives a kind of assurance for the Syrian student.
• Performing periodical placement tests for the Syrian students before the DNM exams [1] for all the studied subjects with the purpose of revealing weakness points for the Syrian students and the subjects they suffer difficulties in learning as well as referring to Syrian associations to provide courses and videos that can facilitate these subjects and work on treating this weakness, and this is for the effect of the educational progress on enhancing the self-esteem of the Syrian students as well as facilitating their interaction with their teachers and helping them to build social relationships with their peers.

Educational and management recommendations: 

Recommendations directed to enhance social harmony in schools:

• Focusing on establishing school educational projects or sports or arts activities that include students from different nationalities with the purpose of enhancing closure and integration between them.
• Directing the Turkish students to help their Syrian peers through distributing the Syrian students on selected groups from the Turkish students and let these groups take the role of helping the Syrian student earn the language and the linguistic skills during breaks and these groups shall get evaluated and have additional supportive marks in the activities section.
• Enrolling scout subject as one of the optional subjects within the curriculum or providing scout lectures, activities and trainings within schools for the success of the Turkish scout experience and the ability of these activities to enhance correct values and concepts.
• Establishing school competition and activities with a familial quality like familial trips or shared kitchens or folks bazaars where it shall include most of the parents from different nationalities of as well as performing competitions between Syrian and Turkish families in a studied manner.
• Making comparison between some Turkish schools and the schools inside Syria and making the Turkish students know the educational circumstances and bad situations the Syrian students live there[2].
• Establishing activities in the schools to face violence among students and clarifying its effects like launching a joint commission from the students of all grades (one commission for each grade) that can held meetings and put a clear code of conduct that should be applied especially towards verbal or physical abuses or bullying cases and authorize it officially by the school management as well as finding a mechanism to develop it every while.
• Establishing a committee inside the school to be specialized in following the poor families (Turkish and Syrian) that are unable to secure school needs (with additional costs mentioned previously like the school fees) and allocate school in-kind assistance to support them in a secret way to preserve the dignity of these families and protect them from embarrassment and bullying.

Legal management recommendations:

Recommendations directed to the concerned persons in solving school problems:

• Focusing on the existence of a supervisor specialized in the psychological support in each school to follow-up all cases regardless the nationality of the students as well as performing periodical activities related to psychological support for all the Syrian and Turkish students in cooperation with some voluntary Syrian teams to enhance coherence between students.
• Working on making the foreign parents participate in parents’ council according to the percentage of these students in school as well as increasing cooperation and dialogue between parents and with the management too.
• Organizing breaks periods to be longer and distributing surveillance cameras in corridors and play yards to make sure that playing won’t develop into a shape of fighting or harmful play, as well as finding a proper mechanism to modify some violent behaviors that appear on some students.
• Allowing students to participate – and adapting- suggestions for solutions for some of what they suffer as well as helping them through providing some awareness raising lectures or activities related to managing differences, solving problems, controlling emotions and team work.
• Strict dealing with any violations with political or discriminative attribute from the Turkish teachers and putting strict laws against those are proved to do so.
• Training Syrian teachers on psychological support skills and make them participate in solving students’ problems effectively in cooperation with Turkish parties.
• Considering the joining of the Syrian teachers to the teachers’ guild especially many of them has acquired Turkish nationality, or finding a specialized gathering for them under the umbrella of the guild that allows to follow their situations and solve their problems.

Recommendations to enhance communication:

Directed to the teachers and parents:

• Selecting one of the Syrian parents who can speak Turkish language well as a representative for the rest of the Syrian parents, especially in the grades that don’t contain big numbers of Syrians, to inform the rest of the parents about the notes of the teachers.
• Arranging to hold periodical meetings with Syrian parents with the presence of translators to enhance communication between parents and management and to know their problems and listen to their suggestions.
• Organizing the open day program where the parents get to know different activities provided by the school for their children as well as cultural days where the Syrian parents and the Turkish parents can do joint activities and make the school and the family exchange experiences about the children and also enhance the social connections between school and family.
• Honoring the distinctive parents- Syrian and Turkish- through organizing a celebration where a group of distinctive parents that communicate with the school in a continuous and effective way get honored.

Recommendations in the psychological and behavioral field:

Directed to the Syrian and Turkish civil society organizations:

• Developing a social and psychological program supervised by social experts that are specialized in fighting the problem of school bullying through suggesting behavioral remedies and social service programs that get applied on the bullying party and the bullied party in order to correct the wrong behavior and modify the mental image as the purpose of the punishment isn’t revenge from the bullying child but treating the problem that led to bullying and transforming him into a good person.
• Producing some movies or cartoon or comic stories that talk about the psychological effects of the bullying on students and how the school environment should be supportive for all students and stand in the face of the bullying person.
• Establishing an electronic platform for psychological support in both Arabic and Turkish languages to help the parents of the students that suffer from behavioral problems to discover the type of these problems relying on some questions or having interviews with specialized persons.
• Establishing an annual event to honor the most distinctive Turkish teachers in explaining information or those who give most attention to students whether Turkish or Syrian students, and they can be chosen relying on voting done by students.
• Establishing group activities that gather the Syrian and Turkish teachers like trips, parties and social activities.
• Launching an electronic platform directed for the Syrian and Turkish teachers that allows them to explain some of the cases they face and get psychological assistance or consultancy. 

Recommendations for parents:

• All parents of the Syrian students should realize that the first and most important step for the success of integration experience of their children in the Turkish schools starts from them as realizing the importance of integration by the family with the host community and accepting this idea as well as working on enhancing language skills and making social relationships are the most important factor for the success of their children.
• The parents should pay attention for their talks and shouldn’t generalize their prior mental image and impressions in front of their children and take all opportunities to highlight positive sides in every community as well as not generalizing a negative image about everybody based on individual mistakes made by some people.
• Increasing the interest of parents in following the guidance and requests of the teach as well as making periodical visits with the purpose of following the educational progress of the student and sharing problems of the student with the teacher and not limit the visits only to the complaints of what the student faces from his peers.
• Keeping attending the parents meetings even if the language level of the parents was weak as attendance and follow-up with or without the existence of a translator gives positive impressions for the teachers and the Turkish parents as well.
• Performing joint initiatives by the Syrian and Arab parents with the purpose of providing activities for the grades to define their cultures in coordination with the class teacher.
• Performing personal or cooperative initiatives to keeping the mother identity of the students as well as developing his linguistic level in Arabic language and make him know his home land historically and geographically and not waiting for others to do so.

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[1] The Turkish Ministry of Education perform optional exams for all the Turkish  and Syrian students in all Turkish provinces and these exams include six subjects which are: Turkish language, mathematics, sciences, social studies, English language and religion and they are performed in one day only and include studied questions from all the topics of the book supposed to be studied by the students., as the results of each students gets analyzed separately and then assess his rank on the level of his class, then his school and then his province and finally on entire Turkey.

[2]This recommendation should be managed carefully to prevent the Syrian student from feeling inferiority or make the bullying students feel superiority that might be addressed in scoffing Syrian students with their country and that they should be in these schools.