Published : 03-11-2017
Yarmouk camp’s residents’ suffering, AGPS published in its most recent report titled “The Palestinian- Syrian Student - “Reality and Prospects,” mentioned the deteriorating educational state facing the students in the camp, since the control of ISIS began in April 2015.
With the aid of Al-Nusra Front, ISIS took control of the camp in April 2015 after violent fighting with the “Aknaf Beit Al-Maqdes” battalion. Despite the fighting and the siege imposed by the Syrian regime and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the educational process continued, amid water and power cuts. The alternative schools continued their work and a number of students living in the besieged Yarmouk camp were seen leaving to submit their preparatory and secondary certificate examinations, in coordination with the Palestinian National Authority inside the camp.
The report confirmed that ISIS and Al-Nusra Front are imposing their personal agendas on the camp and following volatile policies. In an incident that demonstrates this, on Monday 9-11-2015, they banned students who had passed their secondary examinations from going out through the municipality to join their universities. ISIS caused clashes with the regime forces and its affiliated factions in those areas, which halted their exit.
The report noted that the restoration and almost complete control of ISIS on the camp, the educational system deteriorated as a result of the unfair decisions taken by ISIS, which tightened procedures on the teachers and negatively affected almost 1500 students inside the camp. On the 3rd of August 2016, it issued a decision to close all schools inside Yarmouk camp and banning the teaching staff from doing their work, unless through ISIS itself. This decision came after it called in all the teachers from Yarmouk to inform them of a number of decisions concerning the educational process for the academic year 2016-2017, asking teachers who would like to work independently, as a civil user away from ISIS, to register their names within a week from the announcement and with a monthly salary of 25000 Syrian Pounds, which are equivalent to $50.
On December 19, 2016, which marks the first day of school in Syria, ISIS banned the opening of schools in the camp and confined them to one male school near the Ibrahim al-Khalil mosque in the neighborhood of Al-Orouba south of the camp, and a school for girls in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad, ISIS’s stronghold in the camp, as well as applying a curriculum of its preparation.
At the beginning of the new academic year 2017, the same practices continued, however, it has intensified in terms of the restrictions on teachers and students and the scrutiny of the vocabulary used in the government school curriculums, describing it as “infidel.”
Despite the siege, shelling, destruction and the thefts that affected the camp’s schools, however, the will of life and learning among the people of Yarmouk camp has overcome some of the difficulties that stood before the continuation of their educational process. The bodies operating on the camp's grounds began a campaign to clean the schools and removing the rubble from it. A number of alternative schools opened in order to pursue education within the available possibilities with the efforts of teachers from the camp. ISIS carried out many violations in all areas against the people of the camp and imposed its own agendas on them.
Yarmouk camp’s residents’ suffering, AGPS published in its most recent report titled “The Palestinian- Syrian Student - “Reality and Prospects,” mentioned the deteriorating educational state facing the students in the camp, since the control of ISIS began in April 2015.
With the aid of Al-Nusra Front, ISIS took control of the camp in April 2015 after violent fighting with the “Aknaf Beit Al-Maqdes” battalion. Despite the fighting and the siege imposed by the Syrian regime and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the educational process continued, amid water and power cuts. The alternative schools continued their work and a number of students living in the besieged Yarmouk camp were seen leaving to submit their preparatory and secondary certificate examinations, in coordination with the Palestinian National Authority inside the camp.
The report confirmed that ISIS and Al-Nusra Front are imposing their personal agendas on the camp and following volatile policies. In an incident that demonstrates this, on Monday 9-11-2015, they banned students who had passed their secondary examinations from going out through the municipality to join their universities. ISIS caused clashes with the regime forces and its affiliated factions in those areas, which halted their exit.
The report noted that the restoration and almost complete control of ISIS on the camp, the educational system deteriorated as a result of the unfair decisions taken by ISIS, which tightened procedures on the teachers and negatively affected almost 1500 students inside the camp. On the 3rd of August 2016, it issued a decision to close all schools inside Yarmouk camp and banning the teaching staff from doing their work, unless through ISIS itself. This decision came after it called in all the teachers from Yarmouk to inform them of a number of decisions concerning the educational process for the academic year 2016-2017, asking teachers who would like to work independently, as a civil user away from ISIS, to register their names within a week from the announcement and with a monthly salary of 25000 Syrian Pounds, which are equivalent to $50.
On December 19, 2016, which marks the first day of school in Syria, ISIS banned the opening of schools in the camp and confined them to one male school near the Ibrahim al-Khalil mosque in the neighborhood of Al-Orouba south of the camp, and a school for girls in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad, ISIS’s stronghold in the camp, as well as applying a curriculum of its preparation.
At the beginning of the new academic year 2017, the same practices continued, however, it has intensified in terms of the restrictions on teachers and students and the scrutiny of the vocabulary used in the government school curriculums, describing it as “infidel.”
Despite the siege, shelling, destruction and the thefts that affected the camp’s schools, however, the will of life and learning among the people of Yarmouk camp has overcome some of the difficulties that stood before the continuation of their educational process. The bodies operating on the camp's grounds began a campaign to clean the schools and removing the rubble from it. A number of alternative schools opened in order to pursue education within the available possibilities with the efforts of teachers from the camp. ISIS carried out many violations in all areas against the people of the camp and imposed its own agendas on them.
