More children drop out of school, solutions absent in Syria’s northwest
IDLIB, Syria (North Press) – Large numbers of children drop out of school in areas of northwestern Syria, especially in IDP camps on the Syrian-Turkish border.
More than one and a half million children are deprived of education in Idlib and its countryside, according to statistics issued by the Assistance Coordination Unit (ACU).
The number of students who drop out of schools in the opposition-held areas is about 300,000 out of 600,000 students, i.e. 50%, according to the Syria Response Group working in the area.
Multiple reasons
There are several reasons of the phenomenon of students dropping out of schools, the most important of which is the economic and the poor living conditions that the residents of these areas suffer from.
“I left school to help my father with household needs,” the 14-year-old child, Yaqoub al-Ali, who is from Idlib, said.
Al-Ali works in a car maintenance workshop in the industrial zone of the city of Idlib.
“My dream is to carry the backpack and go to school with my friends,” he said in a sad tone.
Suleiman al-Mahmoud, a former principal of a school in the city of Saraqeb, attributed the main reasons of school dropout in Idlib to the disconnection and dispersal of classrooms during the displacement conditions in the past ten years.
“To sit in the classroom with classmates who are much younger than you, causes a bad feeling that pushes you to leave school,” al-Mahmoud added.
Others leave their studies because of “the financial conditions of their families, and lack of sources of income, not to mention the overpopulation in a small area where the unemployment is rampant,” according to al-Mahmoud.
These conditions have forced families to not care about the future of their children, due to their inability to secure school supplies for them.
Jamil Bayoush, 22, told North Press the reasons for leaving school seven years ago, saying: “My father died seven years ago in an air strike targeting his workplace in the city of Kafr Nabl, south of Idlib.”
“We left the city and went to the IDP camps north of Idlib, to find out, at that time, that I had to support my family,” he added.
Bayoush lives with his family in al-Salam Camp on the Syrian-Turkish border. “Here, I had to work in one of the rock quarries near the town of Deir Hassan.”
The young man is paid $50 per month, “but this amount is no longer sufficient in light of the high cost in the area.”
The exchange rate of the Syrian pound in today’s trading, Tuesday, against the US dollar is 4,100 Syrian pounds.
Living conditions
In a statement to North Press, Muhammad Hallaj, director of the Syria Response Group, attributed the main reason for children dropping out of school in Idlib, to the deteriorating economic situation.
According to the group’s statistics, 51% of children are out of school and work to support their families, 63% of them do physically demanding work and 9% do physically demanding work in addition to posing a threat to their lives.
The large waves of displacement that the region has witnessed since 2020, due to the continuous bombing between the two parties to the conflict, in addition to many schools being out of service as a result of demolition, have affected the educational process, according to Hallaj.
About 56% of students were registered without textbooks, 43% were absent due to illness, and 37% of teachers in the region were told by children that they did not feel safe because of their presence in schools, according to the Group.
Hallaj pointed out that the phenomenon of leaving school had existed before, but less, “Today, with poor financial conditions, every family has started looking for another breadwinner, as they resort to child labor.”