October 26, 2026
Public schools and secondary schools in the South Governorate face structural challenges that threaten the regularity of their current academic year, as a result of the intersections between the repercussions of war and displacement on the one hand, and the decisions of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education to reduce classes and merge classes on the other hand, after strenuous efforts made by school administrations, educational bodies and families to stabilize the educational process.
In this context, Representative Inaya Ezzedine called on the Ministry of Education to suspend procedures for merging grades and reducing classes in southern schools until a comprehensive field educational and administrative review is conducted. Ezzedine stressed, in a statement following the meeting of the Women and Children Committee, that “rationalizing spending should not come at the expense of the quality of education, the safety of the classroom environment, and the stability of formal education, especially in the south, which is working to restore its educational health.”
She explained that school administrations prepared class distribution schedules twice during the past months of August and September, and informed the Ministry of them before the start of the school year, considering that amending these schedules after the start of teaching raises serious concerns, as it threatens the efforts made to restore stability to the public school under the exceptional circumstances and under the sounds of missiles.
Ezzedine warned of a wave of overcrowding in the classrooms, some of which have an area of about 42 square meters (6 by 7 metres), noting the possibility that the number of students will reach between 36 and 43 students in some of the first year of secondary school, in addition to proposals to gather 35 children in nursery classes despite their special educational and psychological needs and the ongoing war conditions in which they live.
The representative stressed the need to take into account the accumulated educational loss among students in the south since the economic crisis in 2019, through the Corona pandemic and strikes, all the way to the wars of 2024 and 2026, pointing out that these students bore the burdens of displacement and interruption of studies, and that large numbers of them were forced to move from villages controlled by Israeli forces to safer areas.
At the professional level for professors, Ezzedine explained that the reduction in classes threatens teaching hours and job shares for educational bodies, and imposes sudden changes on administrations after schedules are fixed, in addition to burdening professors with additional transportation costs as a result of transferring them to secondary schools far from their places of residence in light of the decline in the purchasing power of salaries.
Ezzedine criticized the proposal to transfer students to other schools to address overcrowding, asking: “Are you dealing with numbers or with people?”, stressing that this step imposes additional financial burdens and anxiety on the families. It also called for conducting a comprehensive field assessment that includes the numbers of students, room sizes and equipment, and accelerating the issuance of approvals for contractors for school funds and those seeking assistance to cover the shortage that prompted some schools to rely on part-time hours for two days a week for each session.
Ezzedine concluded by stressing that the current timing of these measures is “deadly,” calling on the Minister of Education to deal with the students of the South with an exceptional humanitarian responsibility commensurate with the nature of the stage, stressing that the main problem lies in the absence of prioritization.
