340 schools damaged - 30 completely destroyed: how the school year will begin in Lebanon

About 80 schools in Lebanon are still serving as shelters for displaced persons, about two weeks before the start of the school year in the country on September 15. In some of them, the authorities plan to open classrooms while another wing continues to house families, and in other places, the displaced will be consolidated at one site. In Beirut, the Ministry of Education plans to move families to unused buildings.

According to a report by the AP news agency, the authorities are preparing to resume studies in parallel with the continued operation of the shelters, at a time when about 340 schools have been damaged in the war and there is still no political solution that would allow all families to return to their homes.

"We have a solution for every shelter, and no student will be left without a place," Georgia Hashem, an advisor to the Lebanese Minister of Education, told AP. However, the main problem is the damage to infrastructure: 340 schools were damaged, about 30 of them were completely destroyed, and there is no budget for their rehabilitation. Other institutions are inaccessible because they are located in areas held by the IDF.

"We don't know if the children will study this year"

In the sports hall of a school in the city of Tyre, about 200 families live, most of them from villages in southern Lebanon that were damaged in the war between Israel and Hezbollah. Among them is the family of 11-year-old Fatima Khashab, who was displaced from Mansouri and lives in a small corner separated from the rest of the hall by fabric sheets.

"We don't know if we will be able to return to our village or if the crisis will only get worse. No one but God knows what will happen," her mother, 51-year-old Randa at-Taki, told AP. "Our children have lost the right to school, and we don't know if they will study this year or not."

Four lost school years

Since 2019, Lebanon has dealt with an economic collapse, the COVID-19 pandemic, the explosion at the port of Beirut, and two wars. The series of crises has severely damaged the education system, which for years was considered one of the country's main assets.

"We estimate that students have lost at least four years of schooling," Nora Ingdal, director of Save the Children in Lebanon, which has set up learning spaces for displaced children, told AP. According to her, "a sixth-grade student is actually at the level of a second-grade student."

At the height of the war, about half of the public schools in the country served as shelters for the displaced, and the studies of more than 250,000 students were disrupted, according to a report by the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Qatar.

Nasser Yassin, director of the center's branch in Beirut and a former minister in the Lebanese government, said that the authorities should have used other buildings wherever possible. "We must not respond to a displacement crisis by creating a long-term education crisis," he said.

350,000 still displaced

The current war began on March 2, when Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel, two days after Israel and the United States launched a war against Iran. At the height of the fighting, about 1.2 million people in Lebanon were displaced from their homes.

A fragile ceasefire that came into effect at the end of June allowed most of them to return, but according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, about 350,000 are still displaced. About 21,000 of them are staying in shared shelters.

The IDF still holds territory in southern Lebanon and has made it clear that it will not withdraw before Hezbollah is disarmed. The army has destroyed houses in areas under its control and continued strikes that it said were aimed at the organization's operatives.

"Every day we see how they destroy our village with bulldozers, blow up houses, or bomb them before our eyes, and we can't do anything," at-Taki told AP. She does not know if the family home is still standing. Lebanon's official news agency reported over the weekend on additional strikes and shelling in the Mansouri area.

"We feel like we are suffocating between the sheets"

In the school in Tyre, Fatima is surrounded by relatives and former neighbors, and aid organizations run activities for the children. However, the overcrowding and lack of privacy weigh on the families. "We have a place to stay in the school, and thank God for that, but to be honest, we feel like we are suffocating between these sheets," her mother said.

Before the war, the family made a living from growing za'atar, and the father of the family sold snacks from a tuk-tuk on the beaches. Now they have missed the growing season and are left without work. "I miss many things," Fatima told AP. "I want to go back to school and live in our house."

340 schools damaged - and no budget for rehabilitation

About 80 schools are still serving as shelters. In some of them, classrooms will be opened while another wing continues to house families, and in other places, the displaced will be consolidated at one site. In Beirut, the Ministry of Education plans to move families to unused buildings.

Despite the promise that "no student will be left without a place," the main problem remains the damage to infrastructure: 340 schools were damaged, about 30 of them were completely destroyed, and there is no budget for their rehabilitation. Other institutions are inaccessible because they are located in areas held by the IDF.

The Ministry of Education has offered online studies for students whose schools have been closed, but according to Ingdal, families in shelters do not always have a stable internet connection or enough devices. "It is possible that a family has one device and five children who need to study," she said.