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Middle East Eye wrote:
Middle East Eye wrote:
Around 750,000 Lebanese students and 60,000 Lebanese private school teachers are facing an unknown fate with the worsening economic crisis, which has been exacerbated by forced disruption measures to prevent the spread of the “Corona” virus.
While parents complain that private schools require them to pay full tuition, under threat of not enrolling their children for the next academic year, despite having paid two out of three fees, most of the School administrations confirm their inability to continue working unless the state supports them.
Lebanese private schools have a long history and an uncertain future
Private education in Lebanon was the jewel in the Lebanese crown, providing the country with its successful immigrant elites in exchange for the deterioration of public education.
If there is an advantage for Lebanon in its surroundings that has earned the right to be proud of it, it is the schools and universities that were established in its land even many years before it became an independent entity, thanks to the missionaries who they landed in the Levant and found fertile ground for themselves in the minorities of Mount Lebanon and its surroundings at that time.
For 200 years, sects competed for pioneering education, and today all of this is in danger of disappearing.
In the Al-Tariq Al-Jadida neighborhood in Beirut, Sanaa told MEE: “I asked you to call me now, because this is the only time my son takes a break from the online classroom. There is only one cell phone in home and we don’t have laptops. ” .
Sana lives with her unemployed husband and 11-year-old son, as well as her widowed daughter and grandson. His daughter is the only domestic worker.
Her son studies at a private non-profit school run by the Makassed Islamic Organization, but his mother struggles to keep him enrolled in school.
“I had to find a new form of financial support to keep him in school. The education costs are 1,150,000 Lebanese pounds and we don’t have that amount of money right now,” he said.
At the current exchange rate on the black market, this amount is equal to less than $ 140 (before the crisis, this amount was equal to $ 766.6).
100 thousand homeless children
Today, Lebanese families face increasing difficulties in getting their children to go to school in Lebanon, after they were hit by a serious economic crisis exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the explosion of the port of Beirut two months ago. .
The United Nations previously estimated that the explosion caused the displacement of some 100,000 children.
A shocking statement from the International Rescue Committee on September 28 warned that a quarter of Beirut’s children are at risk of dropping out of school, as 85,000 children enrolled in 163 schools were affected by the August blast.
The state of the public education system in Lebanon has been turbulent for a long time.
Education with a sectarian flavor
Since the end of the 15-year civil war in 1990, public services and institutions in Lebanon have remained fragile and underfunded.
Public spending on education is very low if we compare Lebanon with its neighbors. In 2014, Lebanon spent only 1% of its GDP on education, compared to 6% in Tunisia.
“In public schools, all education takes place outside of the classroom, at home with the parents,” Sanaa said, even before the classes switched to online teaching. He added that overcrowded and poorly equipped public schools also suffer from favoritism and moderation.
For-profit options dominate the scene, with private schools accounting for half of the schools in Lebanon. Political parties use their own sponsorship networks to try to close that gap, in exchange for political loyalty.
The economic benefits that government employees receive are used primarily for their children to attend private schools.
But Lebanon was devastated by an economic crisis that reduced the local currency by almost 80% in less than a year and drove 55% of the population into poverty.
Families could no longer afford the cost of private education and, as expected, they transferred their children to public schools. Meanwhile, the Lebanese government resorted to further reducing spending on public services, and this year’s budget cut public spending on education by 7%.
Teachers fight alone
Jinan Al-Ayoubi, a public school teacher for 25 years, told Middle East Eye: “Public schools are collapsing. We know that this year many children will go from public schools to private schools, but we do not know the exact number.”
In the absence of state support in recent years, Ayoubi added that the school principal had to contact international organizations and the Lebanese army to supply office supplies to the school.
Jinan and other public school teachers were forced to find ways to help parents cope with successive economic shocks, even though they themselves were experiencing financial difficulties.
Their salaries are already very modest and their value has declined further as the coin has lost its value. “At this point, the salary barely covers the transportation costs.” He added that some teachers make long trips from one city to another.
An outraged Jenin said: “We encourage children to exchange books with students of different school years, so that they have the books they need.” He added that the economic crisis has hindered many other changes related to the pandemic, including distance education.
Jinan explained that “many families only have one phone, but they have five or more children who need to attend classes.” He added: “Schools cannot provide a laptop for every teacher. You know how bad the Internet is in Lebanon.”
Sanaa is struggling to gain access for her son through an online education. “We cannot afford to connect to the Internet, so I trust the connection of the neighbors. It is really the worst possible situation,” he says.
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