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Syria: Damascus schools straining to cope with extra pupils

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

DAMASCUS, 3 October (IRIN) - Huge internal migration to Damascus coupled with bureaucratic stalemates over finding land on which to build new schools have left teachers and administrators at primary and secondary schools across the capital facing ever-increasing class sizes and the prospect of double shifts.

"Classroom sizes have been growing steadily over the past five years as more families send their children to school in Damascus," Ghazwan al-Wazz, director of the Damascus Directorate of Education, told IRIN on 28 September.

"We know that 40 percent of students from the countryside around Damascus now come to school here because of the higher teaching standards. That has left an average classroom size of 50 students, which is abnormal and which we aim to half," he added.

According to the Ministry of Education, 402,152 children attended schools in Damascus in the school year ending in the summer of 2006. Al-Wazz said he expected this figure to rise by some 2.5 percent for the school year that began last month.

Official statistics show 22,085 teachers working across Damascus' 571 public and 305 private schools, including kindergartens , and 46 schools run by the UN's agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA).

An increase in tuition fees this year, some almost double, in almost all private schools in the capital has placed more burden on the education system. Many parents can not afford these private schools and are now sending their children to public schools.

With increasing class sizes in public schools, al-Wazz said that at least one in five public schools across Damascus had begun to run double shifts, teaching one set of children from 7am to noon, and another set taught from noon until 5pm.

Large class sizes and the reduction in teaching quality they bring also contribute to high numbers of pupils dropping out of school before completing their basic education, which in Syria is from ages 7 to 14.

According to statistics from the Education Ministry, for the school year 2004-2005 a total of 7,787 children, more of them boys than girls, dropped out of schools in Damascus. That figure rises to nearly 19,000 for the countryside around Damascus.

Iraqi refugees

In addition to children dropping out of school, tens of thousands of Iraqi refugee children do not go to school at all.

A cross-agency United Nations report released in May this year stated that at least 450,000 Iraqi refugees have fled to Syria since the start of the US-led occupation of Iraq in March 2003.

The report - compiled by the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), the UN's children's fund (Unicef) and World Food Programme (WFP) - added that more than half these refugees were children.

However, of the total pupils educated in Damascus last year, only 2,685 were Iraqi, according to government statistics. Al-Wazz said he expected the number of Iraqi pupils attending school to rise to 4,500 this year.

This number should be much higher. "Tens of thousands of Iraqi children should be in school, but many are seeking work instead," said Bashar al Masri, an assistant project officer at Unicef

The Iraqi children that do go to school are another factor contributing to an overall strain on Syria's education system. The UN's May report states that in areas of Damascus where Iraqi refugees have settled, there has been a 20 percent increase in enrolment in schools.

When 10-year-old Ali Raddi Ali first joined his new school in a crowded suburb of Damascus, his teachers couldn't understand why the young Iraqi was lagging so far behind his Syrian classmates on written work.

"I struggled to begin with," said Ali, "but now the teachers are very kind, and they taught me to write the alphabet one letter at a time."

Ali's father, Kassem, explained to his son's teachers that in Iraq children are not taught to write Arabic until grade five, whereas in Syria they are taught written Arabic and English from grade one.

Kassem is a former member of Iraq's Baath party. After the US-led occupation of Iraq in 2003, which toppled Saddam Hussein's Baathist government, Kassem said he was shot at by local militia in his hometown of Basra in southern Iraq. He was forced to flee with his family to Damascus in August 2004.

To cope with the influx of refugees and internal migration to the capital, the Education Ministry aims to improve the quality of teaching in rural areas around Damascus to encourage parents to send their children to local schools.

It has also embarked on a project of school building around the city. However, having aimed to build 12 new schools last year, it was only able to complete six.

"The problem is not the budget, but real estate," said al-Wazz. "Either there is no legal blue print for the land on which we could build new schools around Damascus, or, as happened this year, we get a plot of land but find that there are already families living illegally on it. We can't move them until Damascus Governorate has built them new houses to live in."

As a long-term solution, the government is considering a project to build four extensive school complexes around Damascus that would accommodate pupils from ages 7 to 18 and would reduce the burden on inner city schools, said al-Wazz.

If feasible, the government would seek international support for the project, which al-Wazz estimates will take five years to complete.

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