40,000 students turned away from UNRWA schools due to Gaza closure
15 September 2010
- UNRWA can't meet enrolment demand because of ban on construction materials
- UNRWA needs to build 100 schools, none built since 2007 closure
- UNRWA schools have specialised curriculum on human rights and critical thinking, not available in government schools
Notebooks and pens are in, construction materials are out
Despite Israel's promise to ease the closure of the Gaza Strip, the Gaza school year opened this week with a severe shortage of classrooms. While for the first time in three years Israel has allowed the import of school supplies for government schools in Gaza, the almost absolute ban on the import of construction materials has left students with lots of pens and notebooks but without classrooms.
Human rights studies – not for all
UNRWA needs 100 new schools to meet the enrolment demands of the children of Gaza. But despite the "easing" of the closure, building materials for the construction of schools have not been approved to enter Gaza since 2007. Therefore, UNRWA has had to turn away 40,000 children eligible to enrol in its schools for the academic year that began yesterday. Students at UNRWA schools study a specialised curriculum in human rights and critical thinking, not available in government schools. Furthermore, according to UNRWA records, students in its schools score 20 per cent higher than government school students on international aptitude tests.
Students being turned away from UNRWA schools is only one consequence of the classroom shortage in the Gaza Strip. To deal with the shortage of classroom space, students in most of Gaza's schools study in two shifts, in classrooms with up to 50 students, and sometimes oversized metal containers are used as classrooms, with three children seated at desks designed for two.
Onerous bureaucracy, limited capacity of crossings
Construction of a standard school requires an estimated 220 truckloads of building materials, or 22,000 truckloads for 100 schools. The only crossing Israel allows to open, Kerem Shalom, can accommodate just 250 truckloads per day, mostly for food and basic humanitarian supplies. Despite promises, Israel has yet to approve a single truckload of construction materials for UNRWA's schools and has agreed to "negotiate" coordinating materials for just 8 out of the 100 needed schools. Since the "easing" of the closure, Israel has allowed just 240 truckloads of construction materials monthly for all uses, compared with more than 5,000 trucks monthly before the closure (4 per cent of pre-closure levels).
According to UNRWA’s Gaza Director John Ging: "The right to education is a basic right of children everywhere. For the children of Gaza, realisation of that right depends on the continued construction of schools, because all of the temporary measures and substitutes have already been exhausted."
For updated information about the Gaza Strip's crossings, see: www.gazagateway.org.
For "Safe Passage", a new computer game that allows the player to interactively experience the travel restrictions between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, see www.spg.org.il.
For an information sheet on the changes in the closure policy since the June 2010 cabinet decision, see: Unravelling the Closure of Gaza (PDF).
Courtesy of Gisha
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UNRWA’s record in education is impressive. Through times of strife in the Middle East, as well as times of relative calm, generations of Palestine refugees have received their first years of education in UNRWA schools. Today, the Agency provides free education to some 500,000 pupils enrolled in its 689 schools and employs 22,000 educational staff. Sixty years after its establishment, UNRWA operates one of the largest school systems in the Middle East. It uses curricula of host countries, but enriched with course material devised specifically by the agency on human rights, tolerance and conflict resolution. Conveying to the next generation a sense of universal values in a region beset by radicalism is an incalculably valuable contribution.
More important, since its establishment, UNRWA has made gender parity in education a priority, welcoming girls into its schools from the start. In 1951, the proportion of female pupils was 26 per cent. Gender equity in enrolment was achieved in the 1960s and has been maintained ever since....READ MORE
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