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28-07-2022
SANA’A: August is around the corner, which in Yemen means that millions of students will be heading back to school but with the conflict in the country continuing and the education sector ailing, not all teachers and pupils are excited.
Education in Yemen has been a casualty of the war since it began in 2014, and particularly since the military intervention of the Saudi-led coalition in 2015.
Schools have been damaged or destroyed, teachers have quit their jobs, and millions of school-aged children have dropped out or not joined at all.
The civil strife between the Iran-allied Houthi rebels and the internationally recognised government has overshadowed the importance of education for multitudes of citizens.
Ammar Saleh, who has been teaching for a decade, says students and teachers alike have had to deal with the effect of the war.
“I hope this new school year will proceed in a peaceful climate where students can safely go to their classrooms, receive education, and focus on their homework,” Saleh, currently a teacher at a private school in Sanaa, told Al Jazeera. “I miss the days when I used to teach without fearing air raids, bombings or fuel crises.”
He now hopes that the ongoing UN-brokered truce, which is set to end on August 2 but may be extended, will lead to the warring parties forging agreements that will benefit Yemen, and particularly the education sector.
UN reports indicate that more than 2,900 schools in Yemen have been “destroyed, damaged, or used for non-educational purposes”. Consequently, approximately 1.5 million school-aged girls and boys have been affected.
Despite that, the parties to the conflict in Yemen have dropped education as a priority.
Roughly 170,000 teachers in Houthi-controlled provinces have not received regular pay since 2016, forcing many of them to quit their posts to earn a living in other fields.
Those who have stayed are now frustrated.
“As this school year begins, we ask the Houthi authorities and the Yemeni government to provide us with our unpaid salaries. It is their fighting which has thrown us into misery,” Amal, a teacher in a public school in Sanaa, told Al Jazeera.
Amal teaches mathematics, and says that teaching is the only job she knows.
“We (teachers) feed students’ minds with information. But we need income to feed our children with food. If we keep doing this job without reward, it perhaps means that our effort is not important to society. That is disheartening.”
Amatallah Alhaji, head of the Yemen-based Arwa Organization for Development, Rights and Freedoms, told media that denying Yemeni teachers their pay has been a considerable blow to education in the country.
“Stopping teachers’ salaries has impeded the educational process and deepened poverty. Without being paid, teachers cannot commit to work or even reach schools far from their homes.”
Disadvantaged students shun schools
The primary focus of the warring parties in Yemen is the battlefield, not the classroom.
Consequently, the student drop-out rate has increased.
UN reports estimate that 2.4 million students aged 6 to 17 are out of school.
“The war in Yemen has deprived thousands of students of their right to education and schooling. This happens because many government schools have been turned into military barracks or homes for internally displaced people,” said Alhaji.
Abdulhameed Mohammed, 15, is supposed to be in the ninth grade this school year.
Instead, he has tried his hand at becoming a street vendor in Sanaa.
Last summer, it was ice cream and qat. Lately, he has started selling cold water bottles to drivers on a busy road. (Int’l News Desk)
