In Baghdad’s Green Valley primary school, children wearing face masks waited in long queues early on Monday to pass through a disinfection tunnel before entering their classrooms.
A mist of disinfectant was sprayed as children passed through the tunnel. At the other end, deputy principal Hind Ibraheem squirted sanitiser into the hands of each pupil.
“I don’t know how I will maintain social distancing,” she said. “There are 1,300 students in this school, with only 30 classrooms.”
Pupils across Iraq returned to classrooms on Monday for the first time in more than a year following the prolonged closure caused by the coronavirus pandemic – a closure that compares only to times of war and turmoil.
The pandemic break from in-person schooling in Iraq has been among the longest in the world, affecting about 11 million pupils. The Ministry of Education provided learning through an online platform in the interim, but the focus has mostly been on older pupils taking their final exams.
According to the World Bank, learning levels in Iraq – a country ravaged by decades of conflict and government negligence – are among the lowest in the Mena region and are likely to decline further following the pandemic.
With schools closed more than 75 per cent of the time since February 2020 and opportunities for remote learning limited and unequal, the World Bank said in a report last month that “students in Iraq are facing more than a 'lost year' of learning".
Online classes faced many challenges, including poor internet coverage, prevailing and often daily power cuts, and many families’ dire economic conditions.
Haider Abdel Qader, spokesman for the Ministry of Education, said the government decided to reopen public schools after infection levels dropped following the arrival of vaccine doses.
Iraqis have to resume their lives, and part of life is education, he said. Private schools reopened last month.
Iraq has registered about two million Covid-19 cases and 23,170 deaths so far. Lately, the infection rate has slowed, with an average of 1,000 to 1,500 a day – down from an average of more than 12,000 in July.
The new academic year will comprise four days of in-school classes a week, with one day for remote learning.
Measures such as obligatory vaccination or weekly PCR tests for teachers, mandatory face masks and social distancing measures are in place.
But Iraq’s public schools are chronically underfunded and overcrowded, making them ill-equipped to properly enforce safety measures.
At Green Valley, in the impoverished Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, the words “smile to life” have been painted in bright colours on a wall at the end of a corridor.
But there were few smiles as dozens of pupils waited outside classrooms and on school grounds, only to be told they would have to go home because there was no room for them.
“We’ll try to move them to another day,” Ms Ibraheem said.
The school is building eight new classrooms to expand capacity, she said.
“It’s not enough, but Allah kareem,” she said, using an Arabic phrase that means “God is generous".
Still, many parents were relieved to see their children back in school.
Firas Abu Mohammed, who was buying stationery for his four children at a market on Al Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad, said in-person classes were better than online learning.
“I’m optimistic. I hope to get rid of this damn pandemic,” he said.
