DAMASCUS, Syria (North Press) – The policy of “free education” in Syria turned into a slogan only, and the decision to raise the price of the textbooks is high, as the price of the books for high school students reached about 50.000 Syrian pounds (SYP, about $11).
This is part of the large costs that make the possibility of obtaining equal educational opportunities for Syrians unavailable, and confirm the phenomenon of “stratification in education”.
High costs
The costs of preparing a school student at the beginning of the first school semester are not less than 200.000 SYP, as confirmed by the government employee Imad al-Masdari, who is the father of four children. All of them go to school.
He told North Press that the costs of preparing his four children for school are not less than 800.000 SYP as the price of a school bag of medium quality is 35.000 SYP, and the average price of a notebook is 10.000 SYP, in addition to the price of school clothes, which is not less than 50.000 SYP for each.
These prices are all related to the cheapest types of equipment and tools, as is the case with the majority of Syrians.
Al-Masdari indicated that these expenses exceed all his wages through whole year.
He pointed out that the matter does not end here, as “all parents, without exception, need private courses for their children so that they can understand the curriculum they are studying because government schools have turned into a lifeless structure since their role is almost limited to conducting daily inspections, chanting the morning anthem, and obligating students to attend.”
Abeer Mustafa, a mother of two, said that her house has turned into a school with the beginning of every semester due to the private courses, the thing that costs her a lot on yearly bases.
They have their excuses
Teachers also have their excuse because the “pittance” they receive for their jobs as teachers in the public sector, do not even match the income of one day of private courses. It is very normal for every teacher to try to improve his living conditions as far as he could.
Physics teacher Yassin al-Abd, in one of public schools in Damascus, told North Press that the teacher’s performance in public schools “is really less than that in private lessons.”
He stressed that not only the teachers are responsible for this situation, but also the students, as the majority of students do not come to schools for education, but to only prove attendance upon inspection, and blindly rely on private lessons in private schools.
Al-Abd indicated that the teachers generally start their day in the early morning and end it late at night while moving around and shifting between on private course and another.
For teachers, being in state schools becomes almost their break time, “the students do not care about what the teacher is saying, nor does the teacher care whether students understand the lesson that he explains or not.”
Grades too
If the majority of students depend on private courses, then private educational sector has grades and levels that confirm the prevailing class segregation.
There are teachers and schools, that have become well-known in the city, are dedicated to specific segment of students, and thus, they become the favorite for the limited rich class of Syria.
They open their private courses in luxurious places that suggest and indicate distinction in level and location, such as the Umayyad Square, for example. Those who teach in these institutes have different professional and material capabilities than those who teach private lessons within groups of students in other areas, such as improvised houses, for example.
Nour Zahwa confirmed to North Press that she has been begging, for weeks, for the management of one of high ranked private institutes to accept her daughter among their groups after she was exposed to a health condition, which caused her to stop for a while from continuing her studies in the third scientific secondary school.
She pointed out that her daughter was shifting from one teacher to another paying 50.000 SYP for each lesson.
She said that she cannot be considered among the wealthy people who were with her daughter in these courses but she did not want to gamble with the future of her daughter, so she had to seek help from her family to pay her daughter’s fees.
“The majority of the students in these groups belong to the class of the rich and the officials in Syria, and the money paid by their parents makes the teachers to intensify what can be intensified from the curriculum, so that the students receive the essential information of the curriculum with minimal effort,” Zahwa said.
Shifting to private schools
An educational principle at the Ministry of Education of the Syrian government told North Press that there is a large shifting, by teachers, from public schools to private ones due to the large differences related to income.
“Class segregation has become clear in the educational sector. What teachers teach the rich is different from what they do in government schools, and that the more money you have, the best education you get,” he added.
He indicated that the worst and most dangerous defect in what is currently happening is that “money has become the main key that equalizes between the hardworking student who studied and spent lots of efforts in order to achieve high grades and claim the right of studying in one of the high classified university branches such as medicine, and those who had the money and were able to afford the high fees of private courses thus, scoring high marks that he did not deserve.”
“All of this falls under the category of stratification in education in Syria, and the most dangerous thing in the matter is the general decline in the level of graduate who will eventually become a doctor or an engineer, as long as money is the main key in obtaining these opportunities more than the capabilities of each graduate,” he noted.
Solution
The level of services provided by the government is declining on a daily basis, and the rest of the free education services are almost limited to the efforts of the teaching staff, which provide it in proportion to the low wages they receive.
An expert in the field of human resources confirmed to North Press that letting the education sector decline in this way is “a very dangerous matter because investing in people is the most important thing for which any government or state can establish.”
The measures required in light of this war that the country has been experiencing for 11 years, “force the government to spend on education and turn it into truly fees-free because countries do not develop without the development of their children and the development of their education and knowledge. With the economic hardship experienced by parents, they will not be able to continue educating their children if this was the case,” he added.