In the rolling hills of southern Idlib, once a fierce front line of Syria’s civil war, life is cautiously returning. Families long scattered by conflict are trickling back, rebuilding amid ruins and memories of exile.
Restoring education has become a lifeline for the displaced.
Yet nearly a year after former President Bashar Assad was ousted in a rebel offensive, hundreds of schools remain in rubble – symbols of both loss and resilience.
Across Syria, millions of children are still out of school, and many who do attend sit in crumbling classrooms without desks, books or electricity.
For Safiya al-Jurok, the return home is bittersweet.
She and her family fled Maar Sharamin five years ago when Assad’s forces seized control.
After his fall last December, they came back to find their house in ruins, now living in the same weathered tent that once sheltered them in displacement.
Last month, the town’s elementary school reopened its doors. Al-Jurok’s three children – now in third, fourth and fifth grades – walk each morning past shattered walls and scorched fields to attend class.
The L-shaped building stands scarred but upright, its bullet-pocked walls and flaking gray-blue paint a testament to a community’s fragile hope for renewal.
Inside classrooms, sunlight spills through gaping window frames stripped of glass.
Students sit cross-legged on thin blankets spread over the cold floor, their backs pressed to the wall for support. A young girl balances her notebook on her knees, tracing the Arabic alphabet.
“If it rains, it’ll rain on my children through the broken windows,” al-Jurok said. “The school doesn’t even have running water.”
The school’s principal, Abdullah Hallak, said the building has lost nearly everything – desks, windows, doors and even the steel reinforcement stripped from the structure – looted, as in many other towns across southern Idlib, after residents fled.
“Our kids are coming here where there are no seats, no boards and no windows – and as you know, winter is coming,” Hallak told The Associated Press (AP). “Some parents call us to complain that their kids are getting sick sitting on the floor, so they have them skip school.”
According to Deputy Education Minister Youssef Annan, 40% of schools across Syria remain destroyed, most of them in rural Idlib and Hama, which were the sites of fierce battles during the country’s nearly 14-year civil war.
In Idlib alone, 350 schools are out of service, and only about 10% have been rehabilitated so far, he said.
“Many schools were stripped bare, with iron stolen from roofs and structures, requiring years and significant funds to rebuild,” he said.
The new school year officially began in mid-September, alongside an emergency education plan to accommodate the growing number of returning students, Annan said. He added that the ministry intends to launch a remote learning program to expand access to education, though it “requires more time” and has not yet been implemented.
Across Syria, about 4 million students are currently enrolled in school, Annan said, while roughly 2.5 million to 3 million children remain out of school, according to Meritxell Relaño Arana, the UNICEF representative in Syria.
“Access to education for many children in Syria is difficult. Many of the schools have been destroyed, many teachers did not return to educate and many children don’t even have money to buy school materials,” she said.
That is the case for al-Jurok’s family.
“My eldest daughter is very smart and loves to study, but we can’t buy books,” she said, noting that the children help pick olives after school as the family makes a living from olive oil production.
Hallak said Maar Sharamin Elementary now hosts around 450 students from first to fourth grade, but demand continues to grow.
“We have more students applying, but there is no more space,” he said.
Teacher Bayan al-Ibrahim said many of the children attending have fallen behind academically after years of displacement.
“Some families had been displaced to areas where education wasn’t supported, or their circumstances didn’t allow them to follow up on their kids’ education,” she said.
The lack of seating and school materials makes it harder for teachers to keep order, she added, while parents struggle to stay involved.
“There are no books, so parents aren’t aware of what their kids are studying,” she said.
Relano said UNICEF is working on rebuilding schools, providing temporary classrooms and training teachers to ensure they have the tools needed for quality education.
The task is particularly urgent with hundreds of thousands of refugees returning from abroad, she said. More than 1 million refugees have come back to Syria, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
Beyond infrastructure, Relano said, schools play a key role in the nation’s psychological recovery.
“Many children were traumatized by years of conflict, so they need to go back to safe schools where psychosocial support is available,” she said, adding that catch-up classes are being offered to help students who missed years of schooling reintegrate into the education system.
