Back to Contents 8. Access to education for children 8.1. Do stateless Palestinian children have access to education? If not, what are the obstacles they face? Walaa Kayyal, a researcher living as a Palestinian in Lebanon who was interviewed for this report in October 2022 emphasised the negative impact of a lack of identity papers to pursue an education, despite UNRWA’s policy to open schools to Palestinian children outside of their “mandate” population: “UNRWA welcomes all Palestinians to get an education, I would say, regardless of their legal status. However, they need to see an identification paper and UNRWA registration card in order to register people before giving them assistance. Sometimes the UNRWA allows children without papers to come to learn how to write and read. In Lebanon during the 9th grade all students in Lebanon- whether Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinians, etc. – take an official exam planned by the Lebanese government in all disciplines. If they pass, they go to the secondary level, high school. Those who don’t pass have to repeat their class. This is what we call the “brevet” similar to the baccalaureate that students do during the 12th grade. So, if the principal of the school is very welcoming, they would allow stateless children to come to learn how to write and read, without doing all the homework, but attending the English and Arabic sessions for example, just enough to become literate. But then when they reach the 9th grade, they cannot apply to take the official “brevet” exam because they need to have an ID for that, they need to have something to tell who they are and in order to identify them, where a card from the government is issued based on their ID in order to access the exams.” (Source: Walaa Kayyal, interview record, 31 October 2022) In its Protection Monitoring Report for the 2nd quarter of the year 2022, UNRWA reported that: “Fears about the impact of transport costs on access to education were highlighted by many school principals, particularly as Palestinian children living outside the camps or at a distance from UNRWA schools are increasingly unable to access Lebanese public schools, leaving them obliged to travel to UNRWA schools. As children prepare to return to school full-time for the first time since the 2018– 2019 school year, transport costs risk being a significant barrier to education. (p. 3)” (Source: UNRWA, “UNRWA Protection Monitoring Report – Quarter 2 (Q2) 2022”, 26 August 2022) Refugee Net, which, according to its website, is a “Palestinian Refugee News Network in Lebanon”, published a statement by the Palestinian Teachers Union in Lebanon: “The department also considered that UNRWA bears the responsibility for the state of the educational sector, and today’s results is an example and requires a serious review of the educational process, including the policy of automated grading and negativity in dealing with employees; the difficult economic conditions and decrease in the quality of education due to the employment policy under the pressure of the contrived financial crisis. The number of education staff in Lebanon decreased from 2,082 in 2017 to about 1,655 in 2020 and below that in 2021, despite the increase in the number of students from 3,688 in 2017 to 37,586 in 2020, which had a direct impact on today’s low rates. [...] The success rate in all UNRWA schools in Lebanon was 49.29%, while the success rate in all Lebanese public and private schools was close to 79%, according to the Ministry of Education in the Lebanese caretaker government, Abbas Halabi.”[In-house translation. The author is an Arabic native speaker] ORIGINAL SOURCE: ‫ وتشكل نتائج اليوم احدى مناذجها وهي تتطلب مراجعة جدية للعملية‬،‫ أ ّن وكالة «األونروا» تتح ّمل مسؤولية ما آلت اليه أوضاع القطاع الرتبوي‬،‫كام اعتربت الدائرة‬ ‫التعليمية التي من ضمنها سياسة الرتفيع اآليل والسلبية يف التعاطي مع املوظفني واألوضاع االقتصادية الصعبة وانخفاض جودة التعليم بسبب سياسة التوظيف تحت‬ ‫ رغم‬،2021 ‫ وإىل ما دون ذلك يف عام‬2020 ‫ موظفاً عام‬5561 ‫ إىل نحو‬2017 ‫ عام‬2082 ‫ إذ انخفض عدد موظفي التعليم يف لبنان من‬،‫ضغط األزمة املالية املفتعلة‬ ‫] وبلغت نسبة النجاح يف عموم مدارس‬...[ .‫ وهو ��ا كان له األثر املبارش عىل النسب املتدنية اليوم‬،2020 ‫ عام‬37586 ‫ إىل‬7102 ‫ طالباً عام‬3688 ‫زيادة عدد الطلبة من‬ ‫ بحسب وزارة الرتبية يف حكومة ترصيف األعامل‬%97 ‫ فيام قاربت نسبة النجاح يف عموم املدارس اللبنانية الرسمية والخاصة‬،%92.94 ،‫«األونروا» عىل مستوى لبنان‬ .‫اللبنانية عباس حلبي‬ (Source: Refugee Net: “A warning sit-in by the Palestinian Teachers Union in front of the UNRWA headquarters in Beirut”, July 5, 2022) 8. Access to education for children 78