RAQQA, Prevention of Education and Changing Curriculum

Abdalaziz Alhamza “RBSS”

The first day of school, this sentence is limited now on the regime’s control territory while there are thousands of students out of schools and hundreds of schools are being bombed on daily bases, according to statics, one of every five schools in Syria is destroyed totally or partially or have been hosting displace people.
Education process in Raqqa province is one of the most ruined ones in Syria. In 2012, Raqqa was the first city to host tens of thousands of displaced people from neighbor provinces and lots of schools had closed then to host the displaced people.
After the liberation of the city in 2013, schools have reopened despite the daily bombing; activists had secured the education process needs, but one day, regime warplanes targeted Amer ibn Toufel and more than twenty students had died then.
After that, ISIS controlled the city and stopped the whole educational process; several schools were used as prisons and headquarters and closed all the others temporarily and reopened them and started teaching the group’s own curriculum.
According to a previous RBSS report, named (learning is one of their rights), more than ten schools in Raqqa are totally destroyed, more than one hundred schools are closed and more than 60 thousand students are without schools.
In the Northern countryside, which is out of ISIS control, education situation is not different. YPG, who controls the area, imposed a new curriculum but teachers and principals refused to teach this new curriculum.
The new teachers, who were hired by YPG, have fired the Arab teachers and commanded them to go to ISIS schools according to the activist Ahmed Al Haj Salih.