Violence in south Lebanon has shut 58 schools that normally educate 20,000 children
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It’s Wednesday afternoon, and six-year-old Maher sluggishly wanders around the house in his pyjamas.
Normally at this time of the day, he would be in his school uniform learning to write or having fun in the playground with his classmates.
But for Maher, normal days have become a fading memory since conflict erupted on the Lebanon-Israel border, just a couple of kilometres from his home in Qlayaa, a village in south Lebanon.
His school, like many others in south Lebanon, has been closed for more than five months due to the security situation.
Since October 8, the Gaza war has spilled over into south Lebanon after Iran-backed Hezbollah opened a front on the border in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza. Hezbollah and its allies have been exchanging fire with Israeli forces since.
The fighting has forced 58 schools and education centres to close, according to Unicef, impacting more than 20,000 pupils.
Most schools in the south have switched to online teaching to maintain continuity with the academic year.
Maher’s school is one of these. His majority-Christian town has been spared the worst of the violence despite its proximity to the border, so many of its residents have chosen to remain rather than flee north.
But while they may have not left their homes, the lives of children like Maher have still been seriously disrupted.
He is often unable to attend his online lessons due to the faltering internet connection.
“It was the same story this morning,” said his mother, Yasmina, as she tried to load the page on the tablet as his lesson was about to begin.
The connection did not come back. Maher had to miss his lessons once again.
“These children are at risk of losing the school year,” Unesco’s chief of education for Lebanon, Maysoun Chehab, told media.
Lebanon’s poor-quality internet, the lack of electronic devices in some households and inadequate teacher training are among the major hurdles for online education in Lebanon, she explained.
“The students have basically lost their academic year because they’ve been stuck between online classes with no internet and no devices to use,” said Salam Badreddine, the head of the disaster management committee for the Saida-Zahrani area in the south.
This is yet another devastating blow for the education sector, already reeling from Lebanon’s grinding economic crisis.
Last year, public schools were closed for months due to repeated teachers’ strikes demanding better salaries, which drastically plummeted after the Lebanese pound lost more than 98 per cent of its value.
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