'You can't overstate the consequences' of attacks on Gaza's schools

Some people might think that closed schools are a minor issue for the Palestinians right now, given the scale of the violence that they have been experiencing and the sheer numbers who have been killed, and yet aid agencies continue to raise the issue of education. How important is this to the people of Gaza?

Parents in Gaza cite to us, repeatedly, the importance of education for their children. The absence of that, the destruction of schools, the violence that's been inflicted on students and educators – it is not just incidental. It's not that people are saying: ‘These are these horrors that we're experiencing - oh and I guess also the kids can't go to school.’

This is a pressing and real concern for families even within the heightened catastrophe that they live in because they know how important education is. People don't take it casually that their children have now been out of school for a year, or that you have exam-aged students who haven't been able to take those exams.

We know from our conversations with the people that we try to provide support to in Gaza that this specific element of education is really crucial precisely because it's valued so highly.

So it isn’t the case that the destruction of education is a minor matter or, as you called it, an incidental issue – this is very much at the heart of what is currently being done to the Palestinians of Gaza?

Yes, and this isn't something that's unique to Gaza - when education is interrupted in acute crises or conflict escalations, actually it's quite common that it will be raised aa a big issue. Even for me working on it I'm continuously reminded of just how important it is for children and families and I think for a number of reasons.

One is obviously the future of those children. We don't know how long this will last for, and the fact of week-on-week, month-on-month without education obviously has long-term impacts not only for those individual children, but of course for society.

But in addition to that, access to school and to learning and to an environment with their peers provides that sense of safety and security - of some sense of normality. It's a mechanism by which children can kind of make sense of what's happening in the conflict zone around them and so I think that absence, compounded day on day, you can't really overstate the consequences of that for those children and I think their families really feel that because it's left to them to try to create that safe space, which currently doesn't exist in Gaza for those children, and also try to make sense of the world for them.

With more than 80% of schools destroyed or damaged, the long-term implications of that are very disturbing.

In Gaza, schools were a vehicle for a different kinds of support for children and young people. (Image: Sacha Myers / Save the Children)

The situation certainly seems incredibly bleak. You say the vast majority of schools have been destroyed or damaged, and we know that thousands and thousands of people – including thousands and thousands of pupils – have been killed or suffered life-changing injuries. The people have been subjected to a blockade for nearly twenty years. Even if the attacks were to end tomorrow, would it be accurate to say that a best case scenario probably doesn’t see education restored for a long time?

Yes, I think that's accurate. So I mean the first thing that would be needed is a definitive ceasefire. With attacks continuing at the level they're continuing there's no way in which to safely deliver education of any forum never mind begin to try to rehabilitate the physical infrastructure.

I think it's very difficult to imagine how that can be done, but there is a community there that is expert in doing such a thing. But I read a report recently that suggested that it would take a minimum of five years of recovery time to return to the level of education that was being provided in Gaza prior to October 2023.

What I would anticipate was after a ceasefire that organisations would provide temporary learning spaces, remedial classes, teacher instruction, possibly distance learning - things like that while the school system was being rehabilitated. Save the Children provide those kinds of services and would do so in Gaza if it were safe to do so.

We know from lots of places in the world that we don't need that physical infrastructure to begin to give children that safe space, or to begin to return to some learning, but obviously over the long term we want to see that return to normality for children. So it would likely be a number of years of recovery and of course with every month that passes there is an additional impact on more children.

I think we're now talking about 650 thousand out-of-school children. It was about 625 thousand, and then we had a new school year that should have begun last year that hasn't. So each year will be continue adding to the problem because you don't have exams to students coming out the other end either. So it's really quite a substantial population but obviously of course we're hoping for a definitive ceasefire as soon as possible to be able to begin that work.

There is perhaps an assumption from some that Gaza has just always been some sort of completely failed society. People perhaps don’t think about that particular place and imagine schools and teachers and exams. So, just to be completely clear, prior to October 7 2023, the Palestinians in Gaza had a functioning education system?

Gaza had a functioning education system. Prior to October 7th 2023, children in Gaza were attending school. UNRWA was providing education  services within Gaza, and had been doing so for decades. Now obviously, of course, the siege and the blockade was having an impact on that. Gaza is also extremely densely populated, so all of these factors influence education. In some schools you would have single shifts, in some schools you would have double-shifts, and that is something we see elsewhere, for example in Lebanon.

But it was absolutely a functioning system in which school-aged children entered and would be in that system, working towards to a curriculum, right up through their school lives and then would take exams and graduate. So this is a huge shift. It is absolutely not the case that Palestinian children and Gaza were living without education services. And also that education service would sometimes be complemented by humanitarian actors.

So for example Save the Children, in the schools that we would have supported before, or that we do support now in the West Bank or in Lebanon, we would provide wrap around mental health and psychosocial support. So using schools as a vehicle for a different kinds of support for children and young people, with services wrapped around the school.

Hundreds of thousands of children have now been out of school for more than a year. (Image: Sacha Myers / Save the Children)

And in Gaza those services are, it seems, now even more essential? Even before the current escalation you had at least an entire generation whose only experience was growing up under the blockade, which must have had a massive psychological impact, especially on children. Now we have children who need even more support, given what they’ve gone through, but the places that would have been used to deliver that are in fact one of the things that have been taken from them?

I think that's very well put. What we do have are some remaining UNRWA school buildings. At the moment, they're being used as shelters and so quite often when you hear in the news now that a school has been attacked it's those shelters that are being attacked.

And so of course as attacks continue and civilians continue to feel the brunt of that there's going to be less and less of those school-slash-shelters left.

I think how you frame that they're about the very necessity of these - yes that was powerfully put.

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