Executive Summary- Second edition

The integration process of the Syrian students in the Turkish schools wasn’t easy or comforting for many students especially this process has faced during the last four years some hindering factors that weakened its results and affected its success, most significantly a group of factors related directly to the school system and its individuals like the teacher and the management in addition to a number of other factors that had additional effect on the student and his ability to integrate.

This paper has come to a group of results and they are:

Around the role of the teacher and his effect in supporting or weakening the integration process:

• Teachers weren’t on the same level of acceptance and readiness to get a number of foreign students in their classes especially with the additional responsibilities and tasks imposed on them after the existence of these students. Many teachers have succeeded in dealing with these challenges perfectly while other teachers dealt with them in negligence or in a state of hostility, and this had a clear effect on the students regarding learning language and corresponding with the educational process.
• Students that joined Turkish schools before the integration decision had better attention from their teachers compared to their peers who joined the school after the integration decision.
• Parents showed a state of dissatisfaction regarding the interaction of the Turkish teachers with the Syrian students as 35% of the parents described the interaction of the Turkish teacher as “medium” while 26% of them regarded this interaction “weak” although many students have bypassed the language barriers.
• The students stated during the interviews a number of matters that were the reason for having bad impression about their teachers like: State of anger, yelling, nervousness of the teacher or showing negligence on purpose for the student as well as not responding to his questions and the absence of praising and encouragement or feeling that they don’t receive fair treatment compared to their Turkish peers.
• Some teachers merged their personal impressions and negative political situations towards the Syrians with the classrooms and generalized their impressions and talked about them publicly in front of the students. This increased the feeling of refusal, targeting and lack of protection among Syrian students. This was also sometimes reflected on a shape of refusing to interact or accept the educational subject and created a big feeling of anger and humiliation among the students and also encouraged the rest students of the classroom to target the Syrian students with similar words or annoying behaviors.
• Addressing Syrians with discriminative words by a number of the Turkish teachers was repeated many times as 29% of the students mentioned that they heard phrases from their teachers asking them to return to their country for being Syrians. Also about 6% of the students indicated that they heard these phrases from their teachers for about 6 times and this was also repeated with the Arab non Syrian students in similar percentages.
• Half of the Turkish teachers that we met regarded the Syrian students close to their Turkish peers regarding bearing responsibility, good behavior and discipline and they also show higher percentage than their Turkish peers in the wish to succeed and self-proving.
• Most of the Turkish teachers saw that the aspects of aggressive behavior, introversion and psychological instability are higher among the Syrian students more than their Turkish peers stating that the majority of the Syrian students suffer clearly from learning difficulties even with the development of their Turkish language and that they don’t get proper follow-up from their parents.
• The teacher had the clearest role in allowing the success of integration process for the Syrian students as the existence of a supportive and caring teacher helped a lot in adapting with the school and overcoming the language barriers faster especially if the student felt the love and sympathy of the teacher for him and if the teacher provided encouragement and praising for him.

The role of the school as an educational foundation in enhancing or weakening the integration efforts:

• The Turkish schools weren’t ready to receive these numbers of the Syrian students on the moral level- and sometimes the material level- especially in the areas with big gatherings of Syrians as receiving big numbers of Syrian students as a result to the integration decision caused confusion for the managerial team as well as the teachers and the Syrian and Turkish students equally.
• The schools that owns an understanding managerial cadres were able to control the problems among students and fighting the transformation of the childish problems to any shape of encouraging violence and hatred.
• 63% of parents regarded that the general atmosphere inside the school got affected negatively- compared to previous years- by the media tarring campaigns and this was also emphasized by 51% of Arab non Syrian parents.
• Many managerial cadres showed cold reactions regarding the problems of the Syrian students and meetings with Syrian parents as some of school managements showed emotional behaviors towards parents that were represented in verbal attacks or threatening.
• A lot of school managements lacked the clear laws or experience in dealing with the problems of the students or the bullying cases as in most of times the problems were met with a try to contain them without finding solutions or providing any behavior correcting programs towards some unstrained behaviors and this led to repeating these problems more often.
• The role of the Syrian teachers who got selected to work in the Turkish schools wasn’t clear or had any clear effect in enhancing the integration process as their role, tasks and experiences differed according to the difference of the school’s and teacher’s circumstances like for example his level of speaking Turkish language and owning social skills and his wish in providing benefit for the Syrian students as well as his ability to provide initiatives.
• Some school managements welcomed the existence of Syrian teachers and allowed them to provide some voluntary activities that target the Syrian or the Turkish students or both of them. On the other hand, other teachers suffered marginalization and disturbance and some of them faced discrimination accidents from some of the Turkish teachers who regarded them as intruders that compete with them on the job opportunities.
• The superficial relationship between the Syrian teachers and the Turkish management enhanced a negative mental image for the Syrian students and assured some impressions they had previously that the Syrians aren’t welcomed as a part of the Turkish society or don’t enjoy the same supposed rights especially when they touched the difference between the role of the Turkish teacher and the role of the Syrian teacher and found that the Syrian teacher stand helpless in front of many problems because he doesn’t own any validities or sometimes can’t dare to talk to the management.

 Effect of the educational stage:

• The preparatory/ middle stage came in the first place regarding the spread of verbal annoyance against Syrian students as 76% of the students in this stage faced verbal targeting for being Syrians or have been asked to return to their country by their peers.
• The results showed that opposite to every two repeated harsh and unintended playing cases among the Syrian students in the Turkish schools, there are 6 repeated cases among the Syrian and Turkish students in the primary stage and 5 cases in the preparatory/ middle stage and this indicates the spread of harsh play pattern among students in public schools.
• And opposite to each intended physical violence case happens among Syrian students in the Turkish schools, there are more than 4 cases happen among Syrian and Turkish students in the primary and preparatory stages.
• And opposite to each intended social exclusion case happens among Syrian students in the Turkish schools, there are more than 6.7 cases happen among Syrian and Turkish students in the primary stage and 44 cases in preparatory stage.
• About 25% of high school students faced intended physical violence or social exclusion from their Turkish peers while no similar percentage appeared among the Syrian students.
• Preparatory/ middle schools appears to be the highly affect place with the existence of Syrians and the most place that reject this existence as it includes the highest percentages of rejection shapes and the primary schools come in the second place. However, the effects of this rejection was reflected clearly on the students of the primary stage as they formed the highest percentage of students that suffer from psychological or educational or social problems then comes the students of preparatory/ middle schools and finally students of secondary schools.

Effect of educational refraining:

• The results showed that 10% of the Syrian students were refrained from school previously for a long time and many of them returned to school and joined classes that fit their ages without going through a qualifying stage to give them the information they lack or to gradually adapt to the return to the school.
• The results of accelerated education specialized in qualifying those who got refrained from study in Halk Egitim centers showed discrepancy as some centers achieved tangible progress with the refrained students while other centers failed in doing that for many reasons, like: The limited number of accepted cases and the lack for skills of teaching language for foreigners.
• As a result for some of the Turkish Education Ministry’s decisions that fought Syrian students refraining from schools, a lot of “street children” returned to school fearing prosecution but they returned without getting any prior qualification or behavioral or psychological preparation and this led to showing a lot of behavioral problems with their peers and teachers which the school managements weren’t able to deal with.

Integration decisions and policies:

• 52% of parents regarded the integration process with its current shape wasn’t in the benefit of the student especially with the existence of clear flaws that weren’t treated. However, 44% of these parents insist on leaving their children in the Turkish schools and this tells that the problem wasn’t in the correctness of the decision but in the existence of some problems that prevented the decision from reaching its goal.
• Generally the results showed that students who joined school with a personal decision before the integration decision represent the percentage that faced less problems in all sorts and types while the peak of these problems appeared in the year of applying the integration decision and the students who joined school in this year suffered the higher percentage of problems while students that joined Turkish schools later suffered the same problems but in lower percentage.
• The gathering of big numbers of Syrian students in some grades led to decreasing the possibility of getting in touch with Turkish students and weakened their ability to form friendships and also hindered them from practicing Turkish language.
• The state of repeated movement for the Syrian students between their previous classes and the classes of learning Turkish language with its different shapes and then moving them to the integration classes away from their original classes led to a state of instability for the Syrian student and gave an impression of confusion and not having a clear policy related to integration. Also moving the Syrian students to these classes recently distanced them from getting in touch with Turkish students especially with the absence of any joint activities in the first place, and it also led to weakening their educational gaining in the rest of subjects.