Invisible in the crisis: multicultural and multilingual learners in wartime education and the RESCUE framework for inclusive resilience

Purpose This study aims to examine how the 2025 Thai–Cambodian border conflict disrupted education in four northeastern Thai provinces, documents governance failures that produced compounded harm for cross-border Cambodian and Khmer-speaking students and proposes the resilient education system in conflict and uncertainty environments (RESCUE) Model for inclusive, resilient education in conflict-affected, culturally diverse settings. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative design using thematic analysis of 28 semi-structured interviews with education administrators, supervisors, school administrators, teachers and parents (Thai and Cambodian). Interview guides drew on the Inter-agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) Minimum Standards, Educational Resilience Theory and Banks’ multicultural education framework. Trustworthiness was established through triangulation, documentary source quality assessment and expert validation. Findings Four governance failures caused systemic harm: disrupted learning continuity; inadequate psychosocial support; absence of a national education continuity policy; and institutional invisibility of cross-border Cambodian students in emergency systems built around the Thai-speaking majority. The RESCUE Model addresses all four failures. Research limitations/implications Bounded fieldwork and purposive sampling limit generalisability; the model requires piloting in comparable multicultural contexts. Practical implications The model offers a replicable, bilingual, culturally responsive governance template for national, service-area and school levels. Social implications The model challenges the assumption that citizenship is a prerequisite for educational protection in conflict, aligning with SDG 4, 10 and 16. Originality/value Drawing on field data collected immediately after the 2025 conflict and during early recovery (August–November 2025), this study documents how multilingual and cross-border learners are rendered invisible by monoculturally designed emergency systems, and proposes RESCUE, embedding multicultural and multilingual responsiveness as a core design principle at every governance level.