Last update - 00:00 04/10/2007
High number of students in Gaza UN-run schools fail math, Arabic tests
By The Associated Press
Large numbers of students in United Nations-run schools in Gaza have flunked achievement tests in math and Arabic, the agency said Thursday, attributing the poor showing to violence, overcrowding and poverty.
More than two-thirds of students in grades four through nine failed math, and more than one-third did poorly in Arabic, said the UN Relief and Works Agency, which runs schools for more than half a million children of Palestinian refugees across the Arab world. Ninety percent of Gaza sixth-graders failed the math test, UNRWA said.
In contrast, Palestinian students at UN schools in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan are doing better than their counterparts in government schools, indicating that a stable environment is key to learning, UNRWA said.
The UN agency said it will try to improve results in Gaza by hiring 1,500 classroom assistants, decreasing class sizes to 30 students, adding more classes in Arabic and math, and building a teachers' training college.
The achievement tests were administered during the summer at about two dozen UN schools in Gaza, for students in grades four through nine, said UNRWA spokesman Christopher Gunness.
The agency did not administer tests in the West Bank.
Shaher Said, 13, who attends a UN school in the Shati refugee camp near Gaza City, said he has been distracted by violence. ?How do you expect me to concentrate in my class?? he said. ?If it's not an Israeli air strike, it's a friend of our family or a neighbor being killed in the internal confrontations.?
Gaza's children have been exposed to horrific violence for years, including gun battles fought right in their neighborhoods. Since the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000, Israeli troops have frequently raided areas of Gaza to hunt Palestinian militants, and aircraft have fired missiles at wanted gunmen driving in crowded streets.
For the past two years, the Islamic militant Hamas and the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas have also waged an increasingly bloody power struggle in Gaza. In June, Hamas launched a full-scale assault on Fatah-affiliated security compounds, defeating its rival.
?The cumulative impact of years of violence and closures, of disrupted schooling and endemic poverty is clear from the stark exam results of Gaza's school children,? said John Ging, the UNRWA director in Gaza. ?In spite of the challenging environment, we are determined to ensure that our reforms and our drive for excellence in UNRWA schools will be successful.?
In all, about 195,000 children in Gaza, a territory with 1.4 million residents, attend UN schools.
The achievement test was administered for the first time in the summer, meaning there's no way to tell for how long students have been doing poorly.
Without such tests, problems are difficult to detect.
As a rule, Palestinian students, both in government and in UN schools, are advanced to the next grade even if they flunk key subjects. The Palestinian Education Ministry says it wants to keep as many students as possible in school, and that teachers are therefore only permitted to hold back up to 5 percent of children per class.
Carpenter Suleiman Arafra, 38, who has five children in UN schools in Gaza, said he didn't expect rapid changes.
?We don't have enough room in our house for our children to have an environment in which study,? he said. ?We are victims of the occupation, overpopulation, political conflict and a bad economic situation.?