Amala Global Secondary Diploma
Overview
The Amala Global Secondary Diploma is the first secondary programme and qualification designed with and for displaced youth. The Global Secondary Diploma enables young refugees and members of their host communities who are out of school to complete their secondary education through flexible study, typically over a fifteen month period. Through a combination of Amala courses, a personal interest project and a pathways advising programme, the Global Secondary Diploma enables students to make change in their community and pursue further opportunities for higher education, work and entrepreneurship.
Target group
The target group for the Amala Global Secondary Diploma is young people who are:
Between 16 and 25 years of age
A refugee, asylum seeker or in other ways crisis-affected (such as host community students)
Not enrolled in or having previously completed secondary or higher education
Able to handle subject matter at the level of upper/senior secondary education (Level 3 ISCED)
Components
The Amala Global Secondary Diploma consists of three key components:
Amala Courses - students will study for ten courses within five streams. Courses range from Scientific Informed Action to Economics for Positive Change. Each course is designed to last for ten weeks and involves ten hours per week of study.
Personal Interest Project (PIP)- the PIP allows students to delve into an area of personal interest. It could be an issue affecting the community, a passion or a career goal. Students spend approximately fifty hours on the PIP, culminating in a presentation and report on their learning.
Pathways Advising - Amala’s team helps students to develop their educational and career pathway through the pathways advising programme, which involves a wide range of support ranging from goal-setting, CV and application writing and supporting students to launch their own entrepreneurship projects.
Accreditation
The Amala Global Secondary Diploma programme, run in Jordan and Kenya, is accredited by CIS (Council of International Schools) and American body NEASC (New England Association of Schools and Colleges). A globally recognised standard of excellence, NEASC and CIS accreditation attest to an educational institution’s high quality and integrity. Read more about the joint accreditation of the programme here, and what it means to be CIS accredited here.
How it works
The Global Secondary Diploma has flexibility at its core. It is designed to fit around the daily lives of our students, who will often have family and other commitments and to be delivered in a range of contexts, including in camps and urban settings. The following features define how Amala learning works:
Facilitator led
Amala learning is designed to be delivered by facilitators, who are trained and given ongoing support by the Amala team. Facilitators usually come from the local community (some are also Amala alumni) and have a deep knowledge of their contexts, enabling them to adapt the curriculum accordingly.
Length and Duration
As a guide, the Global Secondary Diploma is usually fifteen months in duration. However, the programme is built to be modular and so can be run in different places in different ways, according to the needs of the students in the location.
The time commitment for students in a fifteen month programme is 20 hours per week: 12 through synchronous in person sessions and 8 through online independent work.
Modes of delivery
The Global Secondary Diploma has been designed to be delivered via a blended learning model, where students come together for in-person sessions and complete independent work online. We adapted the curriculum to an online-model in during the Covid-19 pandemic and we will consider possibilities for running the programme entirely online as well as entirely offline in the future.
Language of instruction
The programme is currently available in English. Over time, our ambition is to make it available in a number of languages.
Learning
Learning at Amala involves shifts in thinking and behaviour which result in an increased capacity to have a positive impact on the world. Our curriculum was developed collaboratively in partnership with our founding education partner, UWC South East Asia, and involved over 150 educators and refugee students from around the world. It is designed to:
Build agency - we support the ability of our students to develop agency: to positive influence their own life and the world around them. Agency is at the heart of our learning model and sits at the heart of all Amala learning.
Develop competencies - using the OECD’s transformative competencies as a starting point, Amala learning builds a set of competencies that will support students in taking action for positive change.
Be contextually inclusive - our curriculum is designed to work in a range of contexts, taking into account diverse cultures and religions. We start from the assumption that our students have unique lived experiences and prior knowledge and we seek to build on them through the Amala curriculum.
Create community - we recognise the importance of building social connections to engage. Amala creates safe and inclusive spaces where students build strong bonds with their classmates, supporting them to learn.
Support facilitators - our curriculum provides clear and detailed guidance on how to deliver high quality learning that develops agency. This means that facilitators can be trained to run any Amala course no matter its subject area.
Assessment
The Amala Global Secondary Diploma takes a competency-based approach to assessment. There are no exams, rather, throughout the programme, students provide evidence of their learning in order to meet Amala’s seven key competency areas: sustainable innovation, resourcefulness, leading change, self-navigated learning, understanding self, other people and cultures, technical, scientific and numerical literacy and problem solving and critical thinking. These competencies are converted into credits towards the Global Secondary Diploma, which feature alongside a portfolio of work on our digital transcript through our partner, the Mastery Transcript Consortium.
Amala Alumnus, Majd, explains more about Amala’s approach to assessment and his mastery learning journey on the Global Secondary Diploma in the article below:
After Amala
Amala actively works to open up opportunities for further education, work and entrepreneurship for Global Secondary Diploma students.
Potential pathways for students include:
Further educational opportunities (higher education and vocational) in areas such as Business Studies and Administration, Communication, Management, Information Technology, Computer Science, Social Work.
Professional opportunities - such as support for further development of entrepreneurial projects, internships, volunteering.
Hear what our students have to say
Learn more
Prospective students - Visit our Study With Us page to see where the Amala Global Secondary Diploma is being run and if we are currently accepting applications.
Prospective partners - Visit our Get Involved page to find out more about running the Amala Global Secondary Diploma.