Afrin IDP students between traveling to Qamishli or staying in the camps

The Education Commission of the Autonomous Administration in the northern countryside of Aleppo has started the registration process for Afrin’s displaced students, depending on admission to the universities of the Administration in Kobani and Qamishli, and to some specialized institutes in northern Aleppo.

The registration for the academic year 2019-2020, in the colleges and institutes of the universities of “Rojava” in Qamishli and “Kobani” in the city of Kobani has begun last Monday.

The Education Commission in the northern countryside of Aleppo has opened a group of institutes with five specializations: science, physics, chemistry, mathematics and teachers’ training, which can accommodate up to 500 students, in the former Juvenile Prison extension, in the village of al-Muslimiya, northern Aleppo.

Despite the Syrian government’s control over the area, and therefore, imposing its educational system in the schools of some villages and towns, its dispute with the Autonomous Administration in several aspects are still going on in that area, especially the educational and military ones.

The Autonomous Administration is trying to impose its curriculum, while the Syrian government which controls the aeea, does not recognize those curricula, prompting students to move into the Autonomous Administration’s universities in eastern Euphrates.

Berivan Omar, an administrators of the newly created institutes, told North-Press that they have opened the institutes in the northern countryside of Aleppo, in an effort to receive high school students, in order to complete their university studies in their besieged areas of displacement.

Berivan along with her colleagues at the Education Commission of the Autonomous Administration rely on the teaching staff in the area, without the need of hiring teachers from other areas, stressing that they are in the final stages of processing the building of the institute.

Renas Habib, a successful high school student this year with a degree from an Autonomous Administration school, has not been able to fulfill his dream of studying journalism. “Since I was a child, I wanted to study journalism, but that specialization is not available at the Universities of Rojava and Kobani, not even in “Vian Amara”  institutes”, Renas said, the displaced young man chose the branch of Kurdish Literature in the University of “Rojava”, which is located in Qamishli.

“I once left the city of Afrin, and now I will have to leave my family here and go to Qamishli to study there,” Renas added.

Amina Muhammad expressed her desire to study “Jinology” – science of women, a branch of science that exists only in the curricula of the Autonomous Administration in northern Syria) which is not available in the newly created institutes in the northern countryside of Aleppo, which will force her to study that branch in Qamishli.

In turn, Fatima Muhammad laments her inability to study at the University of her city of Afrin, by saying: “I wanted to study at the University of Afrin, but the war deprived me of achieving my dream, I hope to return to it, and complete my education in the university there”.

It is noteworthy that the Autonomous Administration has opened the first university in its areas of control in August 2015 in the region of Afrin, where it included 4 colleges and 10  vocational institutes, and three specialized academies for the Kurdish language, as the students numbered about 1,200 students at the university and the institutes, prior to the Turkish military assault and the occupation of Afrin.