Lebanon’s public school pupils miss class - in pictures

Teachers' strike and soaring fees cause dilemma for parents and staff alike

Schoolteacher Claude Koteich, her teenager daughter and 10-year-old son, should all have been back in class weeks ago – but a crisis in Lebanon's education sector has left them lounging at home on a Monday afternoon. All photos: Reuters

Lebanon's three-year financial meltdown has kept public schools closed so far this academic year, with teachers waging an open-ended strike over severely devalued salaries and administrators worried they will not be able to secure fuel to keep the lights and heating on during the winter.

Ms Koteich, 44, has taught French literature at Lebanese public schools for exactly half her lifetime. 'We used to get a salary high enough that I could afford to put them [her children] in private school,' she said.

From a monthly salary that was once about $3,000, Ms Koteich now earns the equivalent of $100 – forcing her to make a tough choice last summer over whether to put her children back in costly private schools or transfer them to a public education system paralysed by the pay dispute. 'I was stuck between yes and no – waiting for our salaries to change, or if the education minister wanted to fulfil our demands,' she said.

While there is little progress on securing higher salaries given Lebanon's depleted state coffers, at the same time, her children's private school was asking for tuition to be paid mostly in cash dollars to guarantee they could afford to pay for expensive fuel and other imported needs. That would amount to an annual fee of $500 per pupil, plus 15 million Lebanese pounds, or about $400. 'The number was very high and out of this world for me,' Ms Koteich said.

So as their former classmates don their private school uniforms, Ms Koteich's two children still have no idea when they will return to class.

The education system in Lebanon has long been heavily reliant on private schools, which taught almost 60 per cent of the country's 1.25 million pupils, according to the Ministry of Higher Education. But the strain on households from the financial collapse has forced a shift and about 55,000 pupils moved from private to public schools in the 2020-2021 school year alone, the World Bank said.

Public education is historically underfunded, with the government earmarking less than 2 per cent of GDP to education in 2020, according to the World Bank – one of the lowest rates in the Middle East and North Africa.

'I noticed that their [my pupils] worries are beyond educational – they started to think about how they can make a living [when] at this age they should be thinking of their homework,' Ms Koteich said.

Edouard Beigbeder, the head of Unicef in Lebanon, told Reuters that about one third of children in Lebanon – including Syrian children – are not attending school. 'We have worrying numbers ... more employed in the labour [sector in Lebanon], and some girls getting into early child marriage,' he said.

A Unicef study this year found that 38 per cent of households had reduced their education expenses compared with just 26 per cent in April 2021. Some hope schools will re-open in October, although there has been no such indication from the government.

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