Human Rights Watch called on donor countries at the Brussels conference, scheduled to be held between March 29 and 30, to address the unprecedented education crisis facing Syrian children in Lebanon.
The organization issued a report, on March 26, in which it talked about the damage caused by school closures and the financial downturn caused by the “emerging corona” pandemic (Covid-19) in refugee-hosting countries, and its impact on the education of Syrian children there.
The organization called on donor countries to pressure the Lebanese government to lift barriers to the education of Syrian children, including restrictions imposed on humanitarian organizations that provide education.
The director of advocacy in the European Union and director of the Brussels office at Human Rights Watch, Lotte Licht, said, “After years of donor promises to support quality education for all Syrian refugee children, the majority of Syrian children in Lebanon do not get anything, and the government's plan is vague. They tie the hands of humanitarian organizations with red tape and unjustifiable obstacles.”
42% of the Syrian students in Lebanon were able to go to school out of 660 Syrian children, including 9% of the children in private schools, during the academic year 2018-2019.
The educational situation of students deteriorated during the 2019-2020 season, after schools were closed as a result of the protests that took place against the Lebanese government in October 2019, so that students returned to school in early 2020, then schools closed again, on February 29, 2020, due to Corona pandemic.
The Ministry of Education announced its adoption of the “distance education” strategy in March 2020, and said that it would start implementing it in July 2020, but it has not yet done so, according to education staff. in humanitarian organisations.
In meetings with education groups, Ministry of Education officials said that around 190,000 Syrian children in Lebanon were enrolled in public schools in the 2020-2021 school year, while only 25,000 others who should have been enrolled in first grade have not.
All children in Lebanon have been absent from school for more than a year since September 2019, due to the closure of schools, but most of the Syrian children assigned to attend “second classes”, especially in the afternoon, told the organization that there is no education, due to the failure of schools In providing them with “distance education”.
Many refugee children cannot enroll in public schools because their families cannot afford transportation costs or because public schools refused to enroll them, as reported by 29% of 443 children in 2019, that schools refused to allow Syrian children to take compulsory exams, if they were not They have legal residency in Lebanon, which is required from the age of 15, but 70% of Syrians cannot afford it or are not eligible to obtain it.
Humanitarian organizations run informal schools near refugee communities and can reach large numbers of children, but the Lebanese Ministry of Education prevents these groups from teaching the regular school curriculum.
The ministry allows humanitarian organizations to teach basic numeracy, literacy, and early childhood education, but has not approved any non-formal education program for children ages 7 to 9, arguing that children should attend public schools.
The Ministry of Education has not allowed out-of-school Syrian students to enroll in schools unless they complete a special donor-funded accelerated learning program that helps them catch up with their peers in school, but the Ministry has not offered the program over the past two years, nor has it offered any option For “distance learning” for the 6,500 students who have been registered, and non-governmental organizations are not allowed to teach it.
During the 2020-2021 school year, the ministry informed education groups that children can enroll in public schools if they complete a basic course in arithmetic and literacy and pass placement tests.
During the summer of 2020, the Ministry of Education closed nine unlicensed private schools with 5,000 Syrian students, while it provided places in public schools for only 800 students. Two humanitarian groups paid registration fees for 3,000 children in private schools, while 1,200 students are still excluded. .
70% of Lebanese children were enrolled in private schools before the financial crisis, but in 2020-2021, nearly 40,000 Lebanese children moved to public schools, narrowing the space for Syrian children.
Donors pay Lebanon a specific amount for each Syrian refugee child enrolled in school, and also pay school fees for Lebanese children, at a cost of more than $440 million between the academic years 2015 and 2019. They also fund humanitarian organizations that provide Informal education for refugee children, but humanitarian funding for Lebanon decreased at each of the “Brussels” conferences, from $1.3 billion in 2017 to $944 million in 2020.
Total educational aid decreased at the “Brussels” conference from 24% of total funding in 2018, to 9% in 2019 and 2020, and accordingly the Ministry of Education refused to organize back-to-school campaigns to boost enrollment under the pretext of lack of funding.
The organization urged the participants in the conference to follow the approach of the European Union, the World Bank and the United Nations, for the Lebanese authorities to disburse aid funding in US dollars, as foreign governments transfer donations to Lebanon, including the salaries of teachers responsible for teaching Syrian children, in US dollars, while Lebanese banks insist on disbursing aid in Lebanese pounds at a much lower rate than the market rate.
Thus, the banks acquired most of the value of donations, because the real value of the Lebanese currency has now declined by 90%, and some Lebanese teachers have gone on strike to demand payment in dollars with the collapse of the value of their salaries, in addition to the refusal of school principals to reopen 80 second-shift schools, because the Ministry Education did not pay them their salaries for the months in which schools were closed during the year 2019-2020.
A survey report by the Lebanese “Al-Jadeed” channel revealed that the actual attendance of Syrian children in the second shift classes during the academic year 2019-2020 was 23% less than the number of enrollments.
According to education officials in humanitarian organizations, there is a lack of government support for teachers for “distance education”, and poor monitoring of the quality of education provided to Lebanese and Syrian children. Primary schools with “distance education”, and contented themselves with sending a link to one video clip on “YouTube” every week to students.
Teachers said the ministry did not provide them with laptops or compensate them for using mobile data. Donor countries funded the United Nations to purchase laptops for public schools in 2018, but they were never distributed, because the importing company allegedly damaged 2,335 laptops in the Beirut port explosion. and selling computers to private buyers.
Teachers and students got free access to the “Microsoft Teams” platform, but in practice, very few second shift classes provide “distance learning” materials for Syrian refugee children.
Poor internet access, the prohibitive cost of data, and the lack of any devices other than a parent's smartphone have also limited Syrian children's access to the internet.
Education workers said that teachers often use the “WhatsApp” application to send assignments and voice messages to children, and to broadcast televised classes for grades nine and twelve, but only half of Syrian refugee families have television, and most Syrian children leave school before secondary school. Less than 1% complete ninth grade.
The director of advocacy in the European Union and director of the Brussels office at Human Rights Watch, Lotte Licht, concluded by saying, "Children have the right to education, and they cannot bear to repeat last year's (Brussels) conference on Syria, when the organizers failed even to include education." on the official agenda.
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