Reimagining school construction for scalability and sustainability
UNICEF is getting children back to school using rapidly scalable construction methods tailored to the needs of local communities.
Around 75 million children living in crisis-affected countries desperately need education support. In emergencies or other situations when school infrastructure needs to be scaled up quickly, UNICEF provides innovative construction solutions to get children back into safe learning environments.
The construction of hundreds of classrooms in Türkiye, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and Bangladesh demonstrates how UNICEF assists countries in deploying innovative, practical construction to scale up school infrastructure that allows for flexibility. UNICEF engages local communities in the construction process and integrates their needs into a customized design.
Modular school construction in Türkiye
By the end of 2019, there were 3.6 million Syrian refugees in Türkiye, including 1.6 million children. Due to the Syrian crisis, a large influx of refugee children in Türkiye led to overcrowding in local schools. Additional classroom space was urgently needed but building permanent school structures was not an option due to time and financial constraints.
UNICEF’s modular approach to school construction offered an innovative, practical solution for rapid scale-up. Traditional construction methods often require significant lead times. Furthermore, these methods can turn a school into a building site which may disrupt learning. UNICEF modular classroom components are constructed offsite in a factory and installed with minimal disruption to the existing school and students. A container classroom could be manufactured and installed in a week with minimum interruption to ongoing education.
UNICEF, in partnership with the Ministry of Education, installed these innovative container classrooms for early childhood education. Container classrooms were a practical and safe solution for Türkiye which could be used in all climatic conditions due to their effective insulation and heating-cooling capability.
The modular design of container classrooms meant they could easily be disassembled and reassembled on another site to function as classrooms or repurposed to serve other needs. The cost was also significantly lower than building permanent concrete structures.
In total, UNICEF installed 300 container classroom units at 270 schools across Türkiye. Each unit has two classrooms and bathrooms. Over 60,000 children will benefit from this increased classroom capacity.
Rapid and sustainable recovery of schools in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)
The Kamuina Nsapu insurgency between 2016 and 2019 destroyed many schools in the affected provinces. To get children impacted by this crisis back into school and create a safe learning environment, UNICEF used local labour and materials to implement a transformable model to rebuild schools with 384 classrooms in Kasaï province.
The transformable model enabled the rapid construction of semi-permanent schools consisting of reinforced concrete structures with permanent dividing walls creating classrooms. Compared to the time it would have taken to build schools into permanent structures from the outset, a semi-permanent solution enabled children to return to learning in half the time.
Local communities were engaged in transforming the semi-permanent buildings into permanent schools. This strategy was in keeping with the local tradition, where the people had always been involved in building schools for their children. The success of this project has allowed Supply Division to promote this transformable construction model as a good practice for UNICEF country offices with similar needs.
Sustainable local materials to scale up schools for refugee children in Bangladesh
In Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Kutupalong is the world’s largest refugee camp – home to Rohingya refugees who brought with them accounts of the unspeakable violence and brutality that had forced them to flee Myanmar. There are currently 902,947 Rohingya refugees living in 34 Kutupalong and adjacent camps in Cox’s Bazar District. Over half are children under 18 years old.
In partnership with the Bangladesh Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, UNICEF worked to scale up school infrastructure in the camps without compromising on quality or sustainability. The solution was the construction of learning centres (LCs) with locally available, low-cost bamboo and sungrass. Unlike some building materials that must be imported, these local renewable building materials are readily available – and also, since there is no heavy machinery in the construction process, they create a low carbon footprint.
Positive social impact
The expertise of the local workforce in using bamboo and sungrass as building materials generated employment opportunities – a positive social impact. Additional materials such as tarpaulins, cement, and brick chips were all purchased locally. Each single-storey centre provides a safe and protective learning environment, with separate water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities for girls and boys and points for drinking water. The total time to construct one learning centre was just 21 days.
UNICEF has supported the construction of 2,763 learning centres across the camps, providing 248,000 children with access to education.
UNICEF is committed to supporting access to continuous, equitable and inclusive quality education for children living in the aftermath of conflict, natural disasters or other emergencies. Well-planned, well-built school environments contribute to children’s learning, health, and well-being and are a critical educational component of UNICEF’s Core Commitments for Children in Humanitarian Action (CCCs). UNICEF’s commitment to education for children and adolescents is defined in Goal Area 2 of the UNICEF Strategic Plan, 2022-2025.
