Number of out of school children doubles in Northern Syria as coronavirus, poverty take their toll

COVID-19 is increasingly bringing education to a halt for many of Syria’s children after nearly ten years of conflict, displacement and poverty, Save the Children has found, as an estimated half of the children that were going to school in North Syria before the COVID-19 outbreak have now dropped out.

Save the Children analysed publicly available data, looked at its own programming, spoke to other organisations and surveyed almost 500 teachers. It found that:

• An estimated 2.45 million children, or one in three, were already out of school, by the end of 2019 in the whole of Syria.
• The COVID-19 crisis has pushed an additional 50% out of education in the north of the country, resulting in two thirds of children being out of school in northern Syria.
  Between the first and second quarter of 2020, the number of students in Save the Children’s education programmes dropped from more than 11,200 to around 7,775.
• In North West Syria, Save the Children’s partners reported losing access to nearly 50% of students in some areas after the closure of schools in March.
• Teachers reported similar figures for Al Hol, Roj and Areesha camps in the North East, where at least 5,500 children stopped going to school.

…..