‘Stuck in sixth grade’: Gaza’s children begin new school year with no class
Afnan al-Shenbari, 12, who replaced the school books in her backpack with clothes as she and her family fled their home in northern Gaza
Maha Hussaini reports in Middle East Eye on 4 September 2024:
Afnan Khaled al-Shenbari bought a pink backpack for the new school year in late August 2023, excited to begin her final year of primary school. Less than two months into the term, in the early hours of mid-October, she took her books out of the bag, filled it with a few pieces of clothing, and fled her home with her family under intense Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip.
For the second consecutive year, Shenbari and students across Gaza are losing yet another academic year due to the ongoing Israeli war in the enclave.
‘Stuck in sixth grade’
Currently displaced in a Deir al-Balah school in central Gaza, the girl, originally a resident of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip, told Middle East Eye that her dream is to use her school bag for its intended purpose. “I’ve been stuck in the sixth grade for two years now, because I’ve never had the chance to finish it,” 12-year-old Shenbari said. “In the fifth grade, I had a high average by the end of the year, 92 percent, but I was hoping to get an even higher one in the sixth grade. But here I am, spending my life in school, not for education, but as a shelter from the shelling.”
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Out of Gaza’s 2.2 million population, approximately 700,000 children and young people were enrolled in schools and universities in 2023. As part of its educational response in Gaza, UNRWA, the UN Palestinian refugee agency, launched on 1 August the Back to Learning programme.
The first phase included psychosocial support activities, focusing on arts, music and sports, and raising awareness of the risks posed by explosive ordnance. In the current second phase, the focus has shifted to informal learning activities, which include lessons in reading, writing and maths.
“Over the past months, we couldn’t study anything, but now I have Arabic, English, and maths lessons – one hour per lesson a week,” Shenbari said. “Science is my favourite subject, but we don’t take that now. I hope to become a medical lab analyst in the future and thus I need to learn science.”
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In a post on X, formerly Twitter, UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said: “Boys and girls around the region are going back to UNRWA schools except in Gaza. More than 600,000 children there are deeply traumatised, living in the rubble. They continue to be deprived of learning + schooling. Half of them used to be in UNRWA schools.” Lazzarini added that more than 70 percent of the schools across the Gaza Strip are either completely destroyed or damaged due to Israeli attacks.