The average annual cost of educating refugees is less than 5 percent of public education expenditure in developing nations hosting 85 percent of the world s refugees, according to a joint World Bank - UNHCR report The Global Cost for Inclusive Refugee Education released on February 24, 2021.
The principle of inclusive education, in this case, opening education up to all refugee children and their inclusion into national education systems can also lead to better services for local communities in host countries. This can be achieved at an estimated annual cost of US$4.85 billion globally. This is a pre-COVID estimated cost of educating all refugees and is likely to increase as the impacts of the pandemic continue to unfold.