Back to school in the Midst of Covid-19!

Parents holding their breaths, teachers afraid of the challenging school year ahead but the students are enthusiastic about going back to school and meeting their long-missed friends. 

Due to Covid-19 emerging in Syria in march,2020 schools were suspended immediately to ensure the safety of our children, but what started as a temporary precaution ended up becoming a reality as schools’ closure continued till the end of last school year. 

From safety perspective, this was a rational solution to mitigate the spread of the virus, but from an educational point of view this long interruption of the educational process became concerning. Specially that in Syria applying remote and online education is not possible for many reasons; such as electricity blackouts and lack of good internet access in more than 70% of communities.

The dispute about whether schools should proceed or not was put into an end on Sunday,13 September, 2020 when the Syrian Ministry of Education announced the first day of school year and issued a safety protocol to be followed in schools across the country to minimize the possible outbreak of the virus in overcrowded classrooms which is the epicenter of the serious concerns.

Coronavirus threats are not the only concerns as the expensiveness of life and the fuel crisis were paralyzing the community completely in the past weeks.

To help you get a better understanding of the financial burdens, we can point out that the cost of a child’s backpack with the curriculum books and needed stationery exceed the average income of an employee (25$). And this cost is per one child and without even including the uniform cost or the tuition fees that widely range between 60$ - 225$.

Hopefully the humanitarian and benevolent organizations will continue their full and partial scholarship programs because they are the only reaching hand for the families.

The School to School Program will also continue to offer support to four schools in Aleppo and one School in Homs city, and will contribute in implementing improvements in the development field which will help our schools offer quality education for their students in these difficult times we are in.