Skip to main content
U.K. Edition
Friday, 29 March 2024

Having fled bombing, Syrian children learn to read in borderland tent schools

Duration: 01:52s 0 shares 1 views

Having fled bombing, Syrian children learn to read in borderland tent schools
Having fled bombing, Syrian children learn to read in borderland tent schools

With about two million children out of class across the country, meet the teachers and students going to school in Syrian refugee camps.

Emer McCarthy reports.

This is the sound of some of Syria's young minds at work.

Ahmad al Hilal teaches at a makeshift school, located in a tent on the outskirts of a sprawling refugee camp city in Aleppo, along the Turkish border.

Many here ran for their lives under heavy aerial bombing by Syrian and Russian jets.

Ahmad was uprooted himself from his town in Idlib province after it was seized by pro-Iranian militias.

(SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) DISPLACED SYRIAN TEACHER FROM IDLIB, AHMAD AL HILAL, SAYING: "In these camps we provide students with accelerated teaching programs so that they don't fall behind.

We have 40 students here, and 60 students, and 45 students in the other camps.

We ask that God help us get our message across in the camps." In the depths of winter, the children huddle on the floor- learning to read and write with limited supplies.

Khaled is a 14-year-old student.

(SOUNDBITE) (Arabic) 14-YEAR-OLD SYRIAN STUDENT, KHALED, SAYING: "We came here as refugees.

There are no more schools because of the air strikes, so we haven't been going to school.

But were studying in the camp here." At a nearby camp in al Bab, volunteers have converted a school bus into the Bus of Knowledge classroom.

Inside the decorated vehicle around 50 girls and boys as young as five take lessons in maths, life skills, Arabic and religion.

According to the United Nations, women and children form a majority of more than 350,000 people who have fled the renewed assault since December.

UNICEF has warned that the war will leave a generation who have never enrolled in school, having a devastating toll on education, with 7,000 schools destroyed and about 2 million children out of class.

You might like