Education Aid For Palestinians

Back to school in Palestine!

This year (01/9/06) , 1,500,000 students are supposed to attend 2,098 elementary and secondary schools in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. About 48,000 teachers will be waiting for them at 8 A.M. This will happen where there is no curfew, and where (military blockades and checkpoints won't prevent or delay the arrival of the students and the teachers.

Will the continuation of the Israel Forces killing policy in the Gaza Strip interfere with the first day of school of about 210,000 students? Furthermore the suspended support by international community makes the situation worse in both Gaza Strip and West Bank.

These are the immediate concerns of the Palestinian education authority, which during the past three years has seen the orderly functioning of the education system and the prevention of dropouts as its most important task, despite the huge logistical, economic and psychological difficulties.

The outbreak of the bloody conflict, the curfew and the closure, the economic deterioration and the military attacks, have all forced the authority to postpone the implementation of the Five-Year Plan for education, which was completed in 2000, and to postpone the measures for improvement and development. Now maintaining the educational framework (in which education is mandatory only from the ages of 6-16) has become a kind of struggle.

Last year the Palestinian Education Ministry was  forced to change the original placement of almost one-third of the 35,000 teachers in the public school system (the rest work in 272 UNRWA schools and 256 private schools). These teachers were sent to schools not according to their area of expertise and the needs of the schools, but according to their access to the school. Since October 2000, hundreds of stationary and mobile military blockades and checkpoints all over the West Bank have prevented passage between cities, villages and districts. Teachers who live 10 kilometers away from their school couldn't promise to arrive on time, if at all. That is why teachers of Arabic teach physical education and math teachers teach Arabic, just so there's a teacher in the classroom.

And  because of financial problems families can't afford the annual fee of NIS 50(£10) per student prefer to stop sending their children to school, rather than admit poverty.

Last year 77 new schools opened, despite the difficulties: 42 in new buildings and the rest in rented buildings. Each year 40,000 new students enter the system, which requires the addition of at least 40 schools annually. Matriculation exams, which usually are stretched over a period of 17 days, continued for 42 days all over the West Bank and the Gaza Strip: Curfews and closures prevented the students from getting to the test on time. The Education Ministry is the first to admit that while they are maintaining the framework, the quality is suffering. All the teacher training programs have been frozen because of access problems.

Tens of thousand of teachers and students come to school exhausted after a night of shelling and exchanges of fire, or after long and humiliating detainment at a checkpoint.

According to the Education Ministry, 390 students were killed by Israel Forces fire during the past three years, and about another 3,000 were injured. That also affects concentration. Every student suffers from traumas and fears, because every student has experienced months of curfew, and exposure to firing from tanks and helicopters. Tens of thousand of students have seen with their own eyes how people were killed and wounded, and houses destroyed.

The Palestinian Education Ministry has established a psychological consultation center, with about 600 psychological consultants and therapists scattered among the various schools.

The monthly salary of a Palestinian teacher in the public school system ranges from $270 to $500 (and somewhat higher for more veteran teachers). With such a salary, most of the teachers are forced to find a second job. They work at gas stations, as drivers and as cooks. Furthermore because the political situation the teachers did not receive their salaries for 10 months, imagine how could they survive! And how come they could give quality education for students. "When they have to concentrate on providing basic needs for their children, they can't concentrate on developing their children's spiritual needs, not to mention those of other children”.