Over 34,000 refugee children to be enrolled in Ethiopia schools

Rabat, July 31 (IANS/MAP) Ethiopia's Administration to Handle Refugees and Returnees (ARRA) has announced plans to include more than 34,000 refugee children in Ethiopian primary schools for the next school year, which begins next September.

The construction of 300 classrooms was underway in 27 refugee camps, in addition to providing the required teaching materials to these schools, ARRA said in a statement.

To date, about 116,500 refugee pupils were enrolled in 56 primary schools and the administration aimed to increase the number to 151,000 in the next school year in Ethiopia, the report said on Monday.

Ethiopia has more than 800,000 refugees, mainly from South Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia. ARRA is working to increase the number of refugee students in secondary schools to more than 2,500 for the next school year.

Last week, Ethiopia opened a new camp for South Sudanese refugees in Binshangul-Gumuz (west) to cope with the growing number of people entering the country to escape war in the youngest Nation of Africa.

--IANS/MAP

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