Calculating People in Need

Calculating the People in Need (PiN) for the Education sector is a fundamental cluster task and provides the overall scale of the needs. It is essential to know the number of people in need of humanitarian support (education) and the severity of needs for planning, prioritization and costing purposes. In a Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO), the sectoral PiN at crisis level typically is an aggregation of PiN numbers for specific geographic areas and categories of vulnerability.

For the Education sector, the PiN is the number of school-aged children and youths in the areas affected by crisis who do not have access to protective education and acceptable learning conditions, which can negatively impact (i) their physical and psychosocial wellbeing, (ii) cognitive development, and (iii) ability to meet their future needs. 

The availability and/or working conditions of teachers directly influence children’s education needs or learning conditions. They are therefore also captured in the Education PiN number.

The severity of the situation for Education is computed based on 4 dimensions (ALPA):

• Access to education

• Learning conditions

• Protection level in or on the way to school

• Aggravating circumstances (at individual level)

   

The table below recaps some examples of indicators falling under each of these dimensions and the main data sources usually available in countries where clusters are activated. The list is not exhaustive and other indicators deemed appropriate at country level can be used:

The GEC guidelines for calculating the Education PiN can be found here. Related training’s content on PiN and severity methodology is available in English and in French (starting slide 27). 

In addition, the GEC, in partnership with IMPACT, has developed an automated calculations platform for contexts where school level data and/or education data coming from households level surveys (Multi-Sectoral Needs Assessments, MSNA) is available. The platform calculates the number and severity levels of Education Cluster PiNs. It disaggregates the PiN by the 4 PiN dimensions and population groups and includes a “Children’s profiles” section that provides key points of comparison between school cycles' age ranges and gender.

Key figures on country People in Need, people targeted and people reached can be found on the GEC data repository.