Cambridge is helping vulnerable learners, such as refugees, to access educational opportunities.  

Today, we have announced the latest Partnership for Education collaboration - supporting Alsama, a non governmental organisation (NGO) transforming education for refugees in camps in the Middle East, to strengthen their new school leaver qualification.

Alsama provides learning opportunities for around 900 refugees and displaced youth in Lebanon. They support teenagers excluded from formal schooling to achieve strong skills in Arabic, English, Science, Maths and beyond. They particularly focus on ensuring girls have equal opportunities. 

Alsama has found that despite their students’ impressive achievements, there is currently not an appropriate qualification to demonstrate their skills. This is then a barrier to accessing higher education.

Alsama designed their G12++ qualification to provide an alternative to secondary school exit exams, like A Levels, which are often inaccessible for refugees and displaced learners but key to pursuing places to study at university. The G12++ qualification seeks to embrace international standards while being highly relevant to a learner’s refugee context and learning experience.

The exam is currently in the prototype stage. Over the next few months, Cambridge will work with Alsama to review this prototype and make recommendations to strengthen the qualification to meet the needs of refugee learners and universities seeking to admit them. 

Jane Mann, Managing Director, Partnership for Education, said:

“Qualifications can be the key to continuing a child’s learning journey. They open doors to higher education and work – important not only for displaced young people but also for our societies to embrace their wealth of talent.

“Qualifications provide recognition of a young person’s efforts and inspire wider family support for education. In the case of Alsama, the teenagers in their schools demonstrate phenomenal commitment and passion. To play a part in recognising their achievements with a highly contextually relevant qualification that empowers them to unlock their potential is a privilege.”

Alsama adds:

“We aim to transform access to higher education to be more inclusive, rather than exclusive, for talented, displaced youth around the world.”

Since 2017, Cambridge University Press & Assessment has been collaborating with Jesuit Worldwide Learning (JWL) to support vulnerable, often female, learners. Our English language experts are providing curriculum support and testing to assist JWL in its mission to provide equitable high-quality tertiary learning to people and communities who are at the margins of societies, due to poverty, location, lack of opportunity, conflict or forced displacement. This includes free course books, free webinars for teachers, and Cambridge English Placement Tests (CEPT) and Linguaskill at special rates.

Lack of English knowledge is the biggest barrier to accessing tertiary education. JWL’s Global English Language (GEL) course, designed to provide students with a much-needed stepping stone enabling them to access higher education, is underpinned by the high-quality curriculum and rigorous testing provided by Cambridge’s English language experts.  

Key facts  

• In 2023, there were over 8000 GEL students worldwide, based in countries from Colombia to Uganda

• 58 percent of GEL students were female

• Nearly 10,000 Cambridge English Placement Tests – used when a student joins the GEL programme, to determine their starting level – have been taken by JWL students since 2018
• Nearly 10,000 Linguaskill reading and listening tests have been taken by JWL students within the same time frame