{"id":612511,"date":"2026-09-11T05:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T05:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/612511\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T05:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T05:46:09","slug":"palestinian-school-year-brings-excitement-for-pupils-and-parents-despite-difficult-conditions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/612511\/","title":{"rendered":"Palestinian school year brings excitement for pupils and parents despite difficult conditions"},"content":{"rendered":"

At seven years old, Yemen Abu Odeh is excited about eventually starting school. He should have started classes last year and attended kindergarten before that, but the Gaza<\/a> war that erupted in October 2023 made that impossible. <\/p>\n

Gaza\u2019s educational infrastructure sustained extensive damage<\/a> during the war. More than 97 per cent of schools were damaged or destroyed, and others required major rehabilitation after being used as shelters for people displaced by the fighting. Hundreds of teachers and administrative staff were killed.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring the previous years of the war there was no education, and schools and learning centres were not available as they are now,\u201d said Iman Abu Odeh, Yemen’s mother. <\/p>\n

\u201cMany children therefore lost educational opportunities and entire school years. Yemen missed both kindergarten and school. He was four when the war began.\u201d <\/p>\n

Children relied on online classes, private centres and tent classrooms to continue their education. Local charities, international aid organisations and community volunteers operated hundreds of temporary learning spaces, while some private schools continued to offer fee-based education.<\/p>\n

However, there has been a push to restore educational facilities after a fragile ceasefire halted all-out fighting between Hamas and Israel last October, although conditions for schooling<\/a> in the devastated Palestinian territory remain far from ideal. <\/p>\n

Gaza’s new school year will start on September 19, according to Ahmad Al Najjar, director of public relations at the territory’s Ministry of Education. <\/p>\n

He said only 530,000 of the 541,000 school pupils could be provided with an education, explaining that \u201cpresent conditions make it impossible to educate every student in Gaza\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cMore than 20,000 students and over 770 teachers and education employees have been killed since the war began. This has created a major challenge in finding enough teaching and administrative staff to operate the learning centres,\u201d Mr Al Najjar told The National.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnother challenge is that some parents are reluctant to send their children to school because of the war, economic hardship, limited public awareness and other problems created by the conflict.\u201d <\/p>\n

‘Everything is inadequate’<\/p>\n

Ms Abu Odeh’s family was displaced from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza to the central city of Deir Al Balah and her husband has been unemployed since the war began. <\/p>\n

Besides Yemen, she has two older children of school-going age who attend classes for three hours a day at a nearby government school, where children receive instruction in five or six core subjects, depending on their level.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are better schools, but they charge registration fees and require families to pay for uniforms and supplies,\u201d she said. \u201cMy children attend school, but we have not been able to provide them with stationery or school bags because we have no money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Abu Odeh said she had noticed a clear decline in her children\u2019s academic performance but saw no way to improve the situation.<\/p>\n

\u201cSchools today bear no resemblance to those that existed before the war, whether in terms of teachers, buildings, appearance, or services,\u201d she said. \u201cEverything is inadequate<\/a>, offering children only the minimum educational benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the difficulties and shortcomings, parents in Gaza, and their children, seemed determined not to give up on education.<\/p>\n

\u201cFamilies have generally sought to return their children to the classroom despite the systematic destruction inflicted on the education system,\u201d Mahmoud Al Majdalawi, a social activist, told The National.<\/p>\n

Children are eager to return to class despite all the difficulties they face, Mr Al Majdalawi said, citing the example of his 10-year-old nephew who has to walk two kilometres to reach school.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a very long distance for a 10-year-old child, who must walk under the scorching sun or in the rain during the coming winter,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Learning under fear<\/p>\n

Palestinian pupils in the occupied West Bank<\/a> have not been unaffected by the war in Gaza, which triggered an increase in military raids and settler violence in the Israeli-occupied territory. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe were displaced from Tulkarm refugee camp more than a year ago because of Israeli military operations,\u201d said Samer Al Jayousi, 42. \u201cI have seven children, four of whom are school pupils aged between 10 and 17.<\/p>\n

\u201cMoving from one school to another because of displacement has affected my children\u2019s academic performance. They also missed a considerable period of education as we moved from place to place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Al Jayousi listed further displacement, children’s safety and the rising cost of transport and school supplies as the greatest concerns for parents in the West Bank, where the new academic year began on September 6. <\/p>\n

\u201cFamilies with several children struggle greatly with school expenses but the fear for our children is even harder than the financial burden,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are afraid of settlers who enter areas surrounding schools, as well as Israeli military operations that take place near schools from time to time.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, my son Sohaib was attacked by settlers<\/a> while he was on his way to school. He injured his hand and spent two days in hospital. The effects of the injury lasted for more than two months and affected his ability to write.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the Palestinian Authority’s Ministry of Education, 634,294 children are enrolled in 1,967 government schools in the West Bank, while another 163,787 pupils attend 480 private schools and 48,208 attend 90 schools operated by UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees.<\/p>\n

Out of 54,196 teachers working in Palestinian schools, 40,747 are in government schools, 11,578 in private schools and 1,871 in UNRWA schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At seven years old, Yemen Abu Odeh is excited about eventually starting school. He should have started classes…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[243,64519,50,85,46,43,2865,789,77],"class_list":["post-612511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-education","tag-foreign-desk-team","tag-gaza","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news","tag-standard","tag-story","tag-west-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}