Education in tatters: Gaza teachers fight to get children into makeshift classes

Families fear another year without lessons

Live updates: Follow the latest on Israel-Gaza

Last September, Mahmoud Shreim was checking his school supplies ready to start his last year of high school. Just over a month later, his education lay in tatters, a calamity faced by hundreds of thousands of Gaza's children, who now seem set to enter a second school year without formal teaching.

Pupils and non-governmental organisation staff say they have not heard of concrete plans to continue education this school term, despite in August the Palestinian Ministry of Education saying it aimed to resume classes in Gaza on September 9. The ministry said students would be taught in a mix of online learning and in tents.

“There has been no announcement or plan from the Ministry of Education about how to compensate students and integrate them to ensure that they don’t lose a year of their lives,” Mahmoud Shreim, from a student from Gaza city's Al Tuffah neighbourhood said. “All the previous years of studying will go to waste without completing my last high school term.”

We don’t have any answers for them but we are working to let students to keep studying

Mustafa Abu Amra,
Arabic teacher, UNRWA school

An estimated 630,000 pupils have been denied access to education since Israel began its strikes and ground offensive last October. Gaza's residents have been forced to flee time and again, each time with fewer and fewer possessions. Some worry that the delay in their children's education will leave them lagging behind their counterparts in the occupied West Bank with no plan on how to catch up.

However, some are less concerned with academic pursuits in favour of helping Gaza's children recover mentally and physically from a year of war that is still raging.

“The war has had a negative impact on our students' psychological well-being; they are much more aggressive now. At this time of year, these students should be in their classrooms, studying normally,” Mustafa Abu Amra, an Arabic teacher who used to work at an UNRWA school.

“Students are suffering from many things, including a lack of education, nutrition, and security – all of which have negatively affected their learning,” he said.

Mr Abu Amra is now volunteering in educational tents set up inside shelter centres to keep students active and busy by teaching them Arabic, maths and English, in lieu of an official curriculum. He says pupils are worried they will not be able to graduate after missing a year of schooling.

“All the students’ questions are if they have lost the last year, or will the ministry make them a plan that can help in counting their previous year with the current year. We don’t have any answers for them but we are working to let students to keep studying,” said Mr Abu Amra.

He said he was in contact with international organisations to try to offer some education.

A man takes cover as an Israeli strike reportedly targets a school in the Zeitoun district of Gaza city. AFP

“I had hoped that the war in Gaza would end by now and a special programme would begin to make up for what we lost last year, so we could catch up with our peers in the West Bank,” Mahmoud, who has ambitions to study abroad and become a PE teacher, told The National.

UN workers also appear to be in the dark about this year's school term. UNRWA spokeswoman Inas Hamdan told The National that “there are no plans for the current education year in Gaza”.

Um Motaz Kaloub, who lives in a tent in Khan Younis's Al Mawasi, is desperate to save her five children's education. Her eldest should be in the 9th Grade, while her youngest is supposed to be starting 1st Grade this year.

“We have to save the students; they are completely devastated. They've already lost one year, and there's uncertainty about this year too,” Ms Kaloub told The National. She said the tents that have been established to teach children are helpful but not sufficient. Instead, she said children are spending their time baking bread, washing clothes and filling water bottles for their families.

“The students go the tents mainly to pass the time, not to study seriously,” said Ms Kaloub. “They need to return to school and be engaged in a structured programme, waking up early, studying and coming home with homework – to keep their minds active.”