Ramadan Darwish, director of the Center for Educational Measurement and Evaluation in the Syrian regime’s Ministry of Education, revealed that the number of drop-outs in Syria over the past ten years exceeds 1.1 million students.
Darwish indicated that the statistics cited were based on available data, pointing out that it is not possible to count students who are currently in the process of dropping out of school.
Darwish’s remarks about drop-out students came as he spoke about a new education program that the Ministry of Education for the regime’s government has begun working on several governorates in Syria, which target the drop-outs.
Darwish said that the program divides drop-outs into two categories, the first of which covers children aged 8 to 14, and the second that targets young people aged 15 to 24. These groups make up the majority of those who drop out of the educational process.
Darwish said that it will be a significant challenge to bring young people back to education if they have joined the labor market. He stressed that a program to educate this group has been developed, the product of cooperation between the Ministries of Education, Social Affairs and Labour, the Syrian Secretariat for Development, and UNESCO.
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UNICEF estimates that, in 2019, half of Syrian children between the age of 5 and 17 were outside of the education system.
UNICEF estimates that 2.1 million children in Syria and 700,000 children in neighboring countries are deprived of education, while a further 1.3 million children are at risk of dropping out of school or being denied education.
Reports confirm that the Syrian regime and Russia deliberately targeted schools with air and artillery shelling, repurposing some of them as detention centers and military barracks. Most of these schools have not been rehabilitated, even after the regime took control of the areas in which they are located.
More recently, the regime’s education minister, Darem al-Tabbaa, explained that there 5,000 schools require reconstruction in the regime-controlled areas.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
