Latakia- Joud Al-Hajj, a second-year secondary school student, believes that the exams were normal, with no significant change in them. He continues that in recent years, students used to begin preparing for the secondary school certificate from the moment they reached the tenth grade.
Speaking to Al Jazeera Net, the student wonders whether the baccalaureate curriculum will remain the same, or whether what he studied and attended will change.
In dilapidated classrooms, and on worn wooden chairs, Al-Hajj, along with more than 233,000 students, takes the first school exams in the coastal province of Latakia (west of the country) after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which hails from the same province.
In contrast to the variation in student working hours during the days following the fall of the regime on December 8, most of the governorate’s students participate in these exams, which are considered crucial for the transitional stages, and experimental for students of the basic and secondary certificates.
Traces remain
In a hall for fourth-grade primary school students, a number of them showed signs of happiness at finally returning to school, and in all innocence they expressed that their parents would not have allowed them to go to school had it not been for the exam, out of fear for them. One of the students says, “I miss my friends so much.”
Traces of the previous regime are still visible on the walls of schools, which are filled with sentences and expressions of Bashar and his father Hafez, coupled with the slogans of the Baath Party, which ruled Syria for more than 6 decades with a tight security grip.
The previous regime had penetrated all aspects of life, including schools, which constituted the basic foundation for building “compliant” generations, whether through sanctifying the person of the president, or through the Vanguards of the Baath organization, which was active in schools and required all students to belong to it.
The study plan that was in place during the period of the previous regime did not change, and some administrative changes took place, in addition to the cancellation of the national education subject and everything related to the symbols of the previous regime, according to a letter sent by the Ministry of Education to its directorates. However, the state of confusion that prevailed in Syria after the fall of the regime prompted the Ministry Education to postpone midterm exams for two weeks.
Confusion and fears
Teachers are responsible for monitoring exams in the schools in which they teach, while the Education Directorate sends committees to tour schools to ensure the integrity of exam procedures.
During its tour of one of the basic education schools, Al Jazeera Net met a committee to monitor the conduct of the exams, where Reem Saqr, head of the Guidance and Curriculum Department in the Lattakia Education Directorate, provided some guidance to male and female teachers.
During Al Jazeera Net’s interview with them, a number of teachers revealed many fears about the change that occurred, especially after the rise of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham to power. One of the teachers, on the condition that her name not be mentioned, told us that she feels confused about her clothes and the way she deals with the new administration.
In continuation of the amendments made by the Ministry of Education during the era of the previous regime to some exams and converting them to an automation system (multiple-choice questions) instead of a written answer to the question, students take tests in some subjects of this type in preparation for the final exams in the secondary certificate, according to what was explained by the philosophy teacher, Nahla. Bakour for Al Jazeera Net.
Accumulated problems
During the past years, Lattakia schools experienced tragic conditions at all levels, starting with the presence of students exceeding the schools’ capacity, and not ending with the lack of the basics of the educational process, or electrical current, which forced teachers to give lessons by candlelight and “mobile flash,” which are conditions Most of them still exist today.
The exams – which came about a month and a few days after the fall of the previous regime and the interim government took responsibility for running the country – placed a great responsibility on the education directorates in the governorates to try to prepare for them.
In this context, the Director of Education in Latakia, Walid Kaboula, in a statement to Al Jazeera Net, described the educational reality he found in the governorate after his appointment by the interim government as “deteriorating.”
He said, “We started from scratch. There are no printing machines, paper, inkwells, or even fuel or electricity in the schools,” and explains how great the challenges were and how they are trying to overcome the obstacles to make the exam process go well.
The hours of electricity supply decreased to only about two hours a day, divided into 4 times, as a result of fuel crises and subsequent damage to the electrical system. The Maher Adnan Zahid Complex for Secondary Education for Girls, in the southern Corniche area, also suffers from a complete power outage.
During previous years, teachers took responsibility for securing needs in various ways, whether by personally bearing the costs necessary to secure them, or sharing these costs with students at times, in light of the low wages of teachers, which did not exceed, at their best, $30 per month. .
Schools were also forced to provide school “evacuation” at the end of the academic year, and this is still in place until now, as school administrations are forced, with personal effort, to prepare it for students, according to what Haya Hanouna, director of Abdul Qader Zaibak Basic Education School, confirmed.
The exams were preceded by intense school activity in an attempt to avoid educational losses resulting from the period of school suspension following the fall of the regime, amid varying student turnout. In this context, the principal confirms – while speaking to Al Jazeera Net – that her school was able to fully prepare the students for the exams after extensive work during which the teachers took turns to intensify the lessons, and she clarifies that almost all of the school’s students attended and are participating in the exam.
Big challenges
The Lattakia Education Directorate considers that the launch of exams, in light of the current circumstances, is an important achievement that reflects a determination to make the educational process a success in the governorate, which contains 857 active schools. It must be followed by major steps related to the rehabilitation of schools and the development of a plan to receive displaced children who have begun to return to their governorate. And compensate them for the years of school they missed.
Likewise, the Education Directorate awaits major responsibilities related to the rehabilitation and maintenance of dozens of schools in the northern countryside of Latakia, whose schools have been destroyed over the past 14 years, which requires “a great effort and very large funding,” according to the words of the Director of Latakia Education, Walid Kaboula.
The exams come in conjunction with security operations conducted by the Military Operations Department to pursue some wanted persons in the countryside of Latakia, which the Director of Education confirmed did not affect the exams or students’ attendance at school at all.
It is noteworthy that the midterm exams began in Syria last Wednesday, and will continue until the 23rd of this month, and 3.5 million students, male and female, participate in them distributed among about 11,000 schools at various levels of study in all governorates, according to what was reported by the Syrian News Agency (SANA). On behalf of the Minister of Education in the caretaker government, Nazir Al-Qadri.