Syrian Refugees: Huge Shortage in Tteaching Materials, Tools

(Translation by Yusra Ahemd)

The Syrian Education Commission (ELEM) has produced shocking figure about teaching and education situation in Syria, which showed the growing gap between the reality and required levels of education, teaching facilities and resources. 

In its first conference in Istanbul, Turkey, (ELEM) took a chance to present its 11 projects for restructuring and establishing new schools, initiating virtual schools, creating orphans' schools and facilitating education for children with special needs, at cost of $.55 Million .

Although these projects look great, they do not cover more than small portion of needs. For example, a project aims to teach and look after 700 orphans, but in reality, this number comprises only 14% of orphans in Syria, which has an estimation of 500 thousand orphans, according to Naeem Mofti, the head of the Syrian Education Commission.

The same principle is applied on children with special needs, as the project aims to teach 600 disabled children. However, according to a survey done for Sample of 3200 students, it was found that children with special needs formed 30% of the sample, which reflects the huge number of children with special need in Syria, Saja Tayyeb, the project manager said. 

It is estimated that around 5 Million Syrian children are deprived of opportunity of teaching, and the number is continuously increasing, beside the number of damaged and inconvenient schools, which forces ongoing changes in plans, Mofti, head of (ELEM) said. 

Mofti confirms that Syrian Education Commission is a civil body limiting its activities on teaching and providing learning materials to Syrian children, “however we do not cover more than 3-5% of the Syrian people’s needs of teaching” confirmed.

The Executive director of (ELELM), Abdul Rahman Kowara, revealed to Zaman al-Wasl the new step of the Turkish Government in regard to teaching has been taken, as it decided to run a “experimental exam” before enrolling in Turkish Universities, for Syrian students who have the Secondary certificate “Baccalaureate” or who finished grade 11 and studied the Syrian or Libyan curriculum. The exam would start this year. 

Kowara confirmed that huge shortage in teaching books is existed, as the Commission has printed 5 Million school books, and other 3 Million are in progress. 

The school’s books project aims to provide school books for 1.9 million Students at cost of $.13.6 Million.