Gaza Children Return To School As UNRWA Classrooms Lack Desks And Equipment

Back to classrooms

Children in Gaza are returning to school as a new academic year begins, with classrooms “heavily damaged and lacking basic equipment” after years of war. At a school in Nuseirat run by UNRWA, some classrooms have “no desks,” leaving children to sit on blankets on the floor, while others have old, damaged desks that survived the war.

UNRWA said more than 280,000 children are now attending its schools and educational tents, and Tawfiq al-Hourani, head of UNRWA’s education program, said UNRWA hopes to “improve the educational environment and restore it to the state it was in three years ago.”

Earlier, UNICEF estimated that about 700,000 children ages 4 to 17 in Gaza had missed formal in-person schooling for almost three years as of April, and about 420,000 had no face-to-face learning at all since October 2023.

In Nuseirat, Al Jazeera reported that “Tens of thousands of Palestinian children have returned to classrooms for the start of a new school year,” with makeshift learning spaces set up after nearly three years of Israeli attacks destroyed most schools in the strip.

Reporting for this sectionAfricanewsAl Jazeera

Tents, desks, and strain

The return is happening through temporary learning spaces, with one report describing tents set up as classrooms where students sit on mattresses and hold notebooks on their laps because there are “almost no desks or chairs.”

In Gaza City, a school principal, Inaam al-Batrikhi, said classes run from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. due to security risks, including shelling from the sea, while she said the school needs notebooks, stationery, desks and chairs.

UNICEF estimates cited in one report said nearly 98% of school buildings in Gaza have been damaged since October 2023, and more than 93% require major repairs or complete reconstruction, leaving education under severe strain.

A separate account said the first return in Gaza City looked like an attempt to restore the rhythm of educational life amid wreckage, with a UNICEF-run school welcoming about 3,000 students while its capacity is only two thousand.

The same report quoted Dr. Jawad Al-Sheikh Khaleel, Director of Education in the Gaza West District, describing the number of students as the biggest challenge, saying “the number of registered students exceeds the capacity of the field schools set up in the tents.”

Reporting for this sectionUA.NEWSAl-Jazeera Net

What’s at stake

Gaza’s education restart is tied to whether displaced families can be housed away from schools, with one report describing the “harshest paradox” that a school becomes “the last place they can call a shelter.” Asaad al-Auja, 40, said he was forced to leave Salman Sultan School after his home was bombed and his brother and infant daughter were martyred, and he agreed to leave only after a tent was provided for his family in the Yarmouk area in central Gaza City. The same report said the Ministry of Education’s plan does not rely on evacuating all schools at once, with assistant undersecretary for student affairs Sadiq al-Khodour explaining that removing the displaced will not occur before suitable alternatives are provided, while virtual schools remain during the initial phase.

In parallel, the education system faces shortages of buildings and supplies, with one account saying the ministry is currently operating a six-period system so that one school functionally operates as six schools, reflecting the gap between students and remaining infrastructure. UNRWA’s education program and Gaza’s education authorities are also working under the scale of lost learning, with one report stating UNRWA hopes to “restore it to the state it was in three years ago,” while another said about 700,000 children had missed formal in-person schooling for almost three years as of April.

Reporting for this sectionAl-Markaaz al-Filisṭini lil-I‘laamAfricanews