A tablet/phone digital language course by UNICEF and the Akelius Foundation, piloted in 3 Lebanese centres (246 students, 2019), then scaled to 64 centres reaching 7,237 Syrian refugee and host-community students in 2020; independently evaluated by UNICEF Innocenti.
Students reached (2020 remote-learning scale-up) (2020)
Details
Promoter
UNICEF Lebanon, in partnership with the Akelius Foundation and non-formal education partners
Period
2019-01 – 2021-12
Keywords
digital learning, refugee education, language learning, ed-tech, non-formal education
Context
Delivered to Syrian refugee and host-community children in Lebanon, where roughly 40% of school-age children are Syrian refugees, this tablet/phone digital language course was developed under the UNICEF-Akelius Foundation Innovation in Education Partnership and rolled out through non-formal education (NFE) centres run by UNICEF's local partners.
Activities
Piloted in 2019 in 3 centres (246 students) as a tablet-based teaching tool within face-to-face classrooms guided by teachers. When Lebanon's schools and education centres closed in March 2020 due to COVID-19, the programme pivoted to a fully remote model and expanded nationally to 64 non-formal education centres, reaching 7,237 refugee and host-community students on household devices with continued teacher support.
Results
UNICEF Innocenti's independent evaluation (Dec 2021) reports positive results for students' language and arts competencies during the August–November 2020 remote-learning phase, and the report is also indexed independently by INEE and the U.S. Department of Education's ERIC clearinghouse.
Conclusions
This should be treated as a documented episode of crisis-response digital learning rather than a confirmed ongoing service: no evidence of continuation beyond the evaluation period (published December 2021) could be confirmed, and Lebanon's severe economic and political crisis since 2019–2020 makes the programme's current operating status uncertain.
Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — No cost figures stated; scored medium given a national-scale device-based deployment run jointly by a UN agency and a foundation, without a confirmed budget in the source text.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Piloted in 2019, scaled nationally during 2020 COVID-19 closures, evaluated through November 2020 and published December 2021 — a roughly two-to-three-year documented arc.
Staffing & skills
UNICEF Lebanon programme staff, Non-formal education (NFE) centre teachers, Akelius Foundation content/technology team
Conditions for success
Existing network of non-formal education centres and local partners enabled a rapid pivot to remote delivery
Continued teacher support alongside the self-paced digital course
Household devices (tablets/phones) allowed learning to continue through school closures
Common failure modes
No confirmed continuation after the evaluation period amid Lebanon's deepening 2019–2020 economic and political crisis
Data sources
Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.