Iraq Faces Schools Crisis

He added “This is not to mention that in packed classrooms, diseases and infections are easily transmitted among the students. Things get worse with the scorching heat as temperatures hit around 50 degrees Celsius [122 degrees Fahrenheit] in the absence of ventilation or air-conditioning systems in classrooms.”

Al-Monitor also met with Saad Hassan, 10, from Babil, who dropped out of school and is now working as a peddler in a large market in Hillah. “I left school because the classroom was packed with students and I could not grasp anything of the lessons. The teachers did not pay me any attention because there were so many students in the class. Sometimes I would skip school and no one would notice,” he said.

The poor and imbalanced educational process has pushed some parents to enroll their children in private schools.

Saad al-Hilali, a merchant from the city of Hillah who enrolled his children in a private school, told Al-Monitor, “Classrooms at Al-Zahra school, which is a few meters away from my home, have about 50 students each. I had to enroll my son in a private school located about an hour away from our home, where there are no more than 15 students per classroom. My son has started to perform better in school.”

The lack of schools and crammed classrooms are not only found in urban schools. Alaa al-Khafaji, a teacher in Al-Yarmouk high school in the countryside of Babil, which is about 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the center of Babil province, told Al-Monitor, “Some classrooms in the schools in the countryside include 70 students coming from different neighboring villages. The more the tribes have good ties with government officials, the more they manage to convince them to build schools in their areas, in the absence of a clear schools distribution plan that takes into account [the areas’] needs and population density.”

For his part, Abu Rihab al-Shammari, a teacher from the city of al-Suwaira, south of Baghdad, told Al-Monitor that internal displacement is another factor contributing to the jammed classrooms.

“Hundreds of families who escaped Mosul, Ramadi and Salahuddin arrived in the city, and parents had to enroll their children in schools. This has increased the number of students in schools, which are not well-equipped for such large numbers,” he said.