In 2017, UNICEF Sweden and the Akelius Foundation partnered to create the Akelius digital learning course to support traditional classroom-based teaching and to be used as a self-learning tool for children without access to any form of education.
The digital course was introduced in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in July 2020 as part of UNICEF’s response to support refugee and migrant children in the country. Working with Save the Children and World Vision, the UNICEF country office introduced the Akelius English digital course as part of non-formal education in temporary reception centres (TRCs) which house refugees and migrants in Una-Sana Canton (USK) and Sarajevo Canton (KS). By the end of 2021, the implementation of the digital course expanded from these temporary reception centres to the formal education system.
The overall research objectives were three-fold: (1) to estimate the program’s impact on learning outcomes and integration of students into formal schooling; (2) to examine the various modalities in which the digital course was implemented; (3) and to understand the programme’s sustainability and potential for scale-up. The research design and methods included in-depth structured interviews, focus group discussions (FGDs) and structured classroom observations.