Educational problems of Syrian refugee students in elementary schools

The aim of this study is to determine the educational problems of Syrian refugee students in elementary schools. Sample of the study consists of 19 primary school teachers and 6 guidance teachers working at five elementary schools in Atasehir, Istanbul in 2016-2017 school year. Data of the study planned as qualitative design have been acquired by semi-structured interview technique. Content analysis method has been used for data analysis. Data set has been checked by an independent reader so as to determine the consistency of codes and categories reached as a result of in-depth analysis. Miles&Huberman formula has been used for calculating the reliability between two analyses and the reliability co-efficient has been detected as 80.244. The findings of the study indicate that the most important problem of Syrian children studying at public schools is language. Language barrier affects their academic, psycho-social and cultural adaptation in a negative way and itcomplicates the determining of their needs in these fields and stops Syrian parents from being involved in the education of their children. The second important problem field of Syrian children in education is inadequacy of regulations. Therefore primarily the language barriershould be resolved and the curriculums should be developed and reviewed by adopting permanent and preventive educational policies for a reliable social integration.