Ever since the collapse of the Lebanese economy and the severe incompetence of the political class in dealing with it, the Lebanese educational sector has taken a massive hit.
Many people are talking about a potential cancellation of the 2022/2023 school year due to the countless obstacles standing in the way of conducting classes next year.
The first of these obstacles is the exponential rise in gas and fuel prices. This massive increase threatens the school year in two ways.
First, teachers and students will struggle to reach their schools due to the increase in gas prices.
On top of that, due to complications between the Lebanese government and the Central Bank, gas is often stored and monopolized by businessmen, which leads to its scarcity in the market.
Second, the rise in diesel fuel prices poses a threat to the ability of schools to light up their classes. Moreover, schools situated in remote areas where temperature levels drop massively during winter will not be able to heat up their classes.
Another threat facing next year’s school year is the dollarization of private school tuition fees. After the rise of the USD exchange rate in Lebanon, private schools have decided to dollarize their tuition in order to cover their expenses.
This will cause a massive wave of students transferring from private to public schools, which experts believe cannot handle that pressure.
With over 2 million Lebanese people now living in severe poverty, many families will struggle to afford the high tuition fees as well as books and school materials.
Perhaps the biggest threat of the 2022/2023 school year is the refusal of thousands of teachers to work in the extremely harsh conditions imposed by the Ministry of Education.
Many teachers were promised salary increases, however, these promises were not kept, which led to many teachers quitting their jobs and seeking emigration.
With the current political and economic challenges facing Lebanon, many doubt that the Ministry of Education will manage to tackle these issues, leaving hundreds of thousands of kids at risk of losing one of their basic rights.
