One of the main questions that accompanies the successful implementation of any humanitarian programme is ‘how or can it be scaled? Streitweiser et al. (2019: 18) indeed say that a key question that needs to be asked about any educational intervention is ‘​​Can services that seem to be working be scaled up to have a greater impact?’ Rarely is the question of whether services should be scaled up asked, even if they could be, and yet we believe that this is a critical question to consider first.

Reflections from FFAMuch of the success of FFA can be attributed to the fact that the programme was designed in a deliberative and bespoke way following research into the demographics of the potential student population and drawing upon the enormous expertise of RLP, which has spent decades delivering education to learners with refugee backgrounds. The successes that the project had were down to the personal commitment and personalised support provided by dedicated staff members who have enormous familiarity with the challenges and opportunities for displaced populations in Uganda. Many of the challenges the students and programme faced (such as the initial inability for refugees to register for the Makerere Mature Entry Exam without formal refugee ID cards) were only addressed because of the established networks and experiences of RLP staff members, and others were only identified and mitigated against because of RLP’s extensive knowledge about the situation of refugees in Uganda.  The psychosocial support element of FFA, which was critical to most student’s positive experience of the programme, was also made possible because the cohort was small enough for tutors and staff members to identify students who were struggling and to respond to their needs personally. Emphasis on this part of the programme emerged from learning on the PADILEIA and from RLP’s experience, both of which pointed to the need for any educational curriculum to embed psycho-social support for displaced learners in all aspects of programme design and delivery given the impact that trauma has on students’ ability to learn and engage with their studies.The history and experience of the main partners was thus critical for the co-design and implementation of a successful programme of this nature. We were also increasingly committed to FFA being a contextualised blended bridging programme, designed in response to the specific needs of refugee learners in Uganda and the higher education sector within the country. This meant that the curriculums had to be designed in response to baseline assessments of the students selected for the programmes, and delivered through platforms that suited the specific conditions of the learning centres in Kiryandongo and Kampala. We wanted to design curricula that were engaging because they were relevant to student’s experiences, such as through allocating seminar readings related to the Great Lakes context, related to their surroundings, such as through organising talks from Makerere University, and accommodated site-specific considerations, such as food distribution days. While the principles underpinning this programme design can thus be scaled, the specific details of the programme must be considered afresh each time. The purpose of the Scoping Tool and Design Framework is thus to outline how similar blended bridging programmes might be successfully designed in other contexts, but not to imply that FFA either can or should necessarily be scaled up significantly itself. Features and approaches that it has adopted may have utility in other contexts, while others may be completely irrelevant or poorly suited to student’s backgrounds and aspirations in another location, even within Uganda. We believe that the model of small-scale, student-centred, targeted programmes like FFA should be encouraged, not necessarily a quantitative increase in the number of students in each initiative.

Streitwieser, B., Loo, B., Ohorodnik, M., & Jeong, J. (2019). Access for refugees into higher education: A review of interventions in North America and Europe. Journal of Studies in International Education, 23(4), 473-496.