Syria Intensifies Efforts to Reconnect 2 Million Children With Education
Syria is ramping up efforts to bring an estimated 2 million out-of-school children back into the education system, combining learning assessments, measures to address lost schooling, and plans to expand access more broadly.
As part of that push, the Education Ministry said Sunday it carried out knowledge assessments for out-of-school children in Hasakah province to evaluate their current educational level and identify what support they need. The goal is to measure how much learning has been lost and place children into grades that match their actual abilities, creating a pathway back into school and helping them catch up on missed instruction.
Education Minister Mohammed Abdul Rahman Turko told a People’s Assembly hearing on September 14 that roughly 2 million students are estimated to have dropped out of school, citing a mix of economic and social pressures as well as the absence of schools in some areas. He said total enrollment is expected to reach 6 million students during the current academic year, a jump that presents significant challenges for the ministry as it works to accommodate the growth. Students returning to Syria from abroad face their own set of obstacles, he added, including missing documentation, language barriers, and gaps between the curricula they previously studied and Syria’s own system. Turko said the ministry is pursuing both emergency and longer-term strategic plans to secure children’s right to education, aiming to move beyond simply patching existing gaps toward building a stronger, more equitable system overall.
The effort in Hasakah began earlier this year, with initial steps taken to give students whose schooling had been disrupted a chance to resume their studies. On April 2, the Hasakah Directorate of Education administered assessment tests to eighth- and eleventh-grade students across Hasakah and Qamishli, as well as in several educational complexes in surrounding rural areas. Hasakah Education Director Adnan Al-Bari said the tests were designed to let students who had stopped studying due to conditions in the province sit for basic education and general secondary certificate exams and continue their education from there.
The ministry has also emphasized that tackling school dropout can’t be solved by education policy alone. In a May 31 interview with Syria’s Alikhbariah TV, Turko said the issue is tied to broader social and economic factors and requires cooperation across multiple government ministries, not just his own. He said the Education Ministry’s role is to provide an appropriate learning environment and ensure access to schooling, and noted that several decisions and facilitation measures had already been introduced to support students, particularly in Syria’s eastern region.
Together, the measures rolled out this year offer different routes back into education depending on a student’s age and circumstances, from helping older students qualify to sit certificate exams to assessing learning loss and determining the right level for younger children to resume their schooling.
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