Out of Syria, but back to school

Five years on from the start of the conflict, meet some of the 200,000 Syrian children helped back into school by UK aid.

Look around you: the 360-degree, immersive video below introduces you to the real-life stories of Mustafa and Sarah, two Syrian children who are now refugees in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

They both fled the fighting in Syria with their families. They left their homelands — and their schools — behind.

Now they are safe — but while Sarah is back in school with the help of UK aid, Mustafa is having to work to help support his family.

“I cannot not go to school”

Sarah, aged 12, is from Dara’a. She was forced to flee the fighting with her family in 2012 — leaving her homeland, and school, behind.

Today, she attends the Bar Elias school in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley — a school supported by UK aid to UNICEF and the Government of Lebanon to help accommodate Syrian refugee students.

“I’ve been here for three and a half years”, says Sarah.

“I’m happy that the head teacher enrolled me in this school and now I can continue my education. The teachers treat me the same as the Lebanese students.

“We are happy here in Lebanon but it is not my country. My country deserves me.

“I cannot not go to school”, she says.

Sarah’s mother, Khadija, says that when the family first came to Lebanon there was no support available, but now the situation has improved.

“”The head teacher here is very good and he has helped us a lot. He tries to enrol as many Syrian students as he can.

“When we first came to Lebanon, no one was registered. Now there are buses to take the children to school.

“Morning shift or evening shift the most important thing is that all the children are in school”, she says.

Ahmed, 13, arrived in Lebanon in 2014. Like Sarah, he was also forced to leave Aleppo in Syria with his family because of the conflict. “I left my toys there, like my toy car”, he says.

He was also out of school for a year, but last year he too was able to start attending the Bar Elias School.

He found it difficult at first, as the lessons in Lebanon are taught mainly in English and French, but is slowly adapting and learning both languages.

“I am glad to go back too school”, says Ahmed. “On my first day at school we played in the playground, then we went to class and started to study”.

Ehssan Aragi is the principal at Bar Elias school.

“As a head teacher, regardless of the nationality of the pupil, you deal with them as a child who needs education”, he says.

Like many schools in Lebanon, Bar Elias now runs a morning shift for Lebanese and Syrian refugee students and an evening shift allocated just for Syrian refugees. The curriculum has been amended to help the Syrian students integrate into the Lebanese system.

“In the end the students are all children,” says Ehssan.

“They play the same games, eat the same meals, walk the same way home. So after a while they get used to their situation and adjust to it.

“Since 2012 it’s improved here. The support we’ve received has enabled us to take in more students and we’ve adapted the curriculum to accommodate the Syrian students. There are some students who have got excellent marks and they keep up with their studies very easily”.

Meet Chouk

Since leaving Syria in 2011, Chouk has been living with her parents and 5 brothers and sisters in a makeshift, tented shelter in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.

“We were pushed out of our land”, says Chouk.

“That’s the saddest thing I can imagine”.

After 3 years in the country, Chouk was finally able to start attending Terbol Elementary School — another school also supported by UK aid and UNICEF .

“School is beautiful here, but it was also beautiful in Syria”, says Chouk.

“It is definitely important, for children and adults, to educate them and teach them.

“We learn from each other. We joke, we play, we laugh. When we grow up and we meet up together we will remember being children together at school”.

“When I grow up, I wanted to become an Arabic teacher.

“But now I’ve changed my mind. I want to become a policewoman now, in Lebanon or Syria.

“If Syria gets back to what it used to be”.

Mustafa is 13 years old. He and the rest of his family fled their hometown of Hama in Syria over 4 years ago because of the war — but unlike Ahmed, Chouk and Sarah, Mustafa hasn’t been able to go back to school since.

Instead of being in a classroom, he is helping support his family, who have very little money. Now, they live in an unfinished house near Baalbek, some 30 miles away from Bar Elias.

Mustafa works from 8am until 4pm every day at the local grocery store, near to Baalbek, where they’re living in the north of Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley. He gets paid around $20 a week. He also helps his dad, Taman, who is a painter and decorator.

“In Syria, my life was different”, says Mustafa.

“I used to go to school. I used to have friends there. I had a great life there.

“Now, I say to myself it is impossible to get back.”

For now, he hopes to join an after-hours education programme at the nearby SAWA centre — also backed by British aid through UNICEF — to continue school around his work shifts.

Established in 1992, SAWA works closely with UNICEF, UNHCR and other aid agencies to help educate and distribute food and other services to refugees.

Around 500,000 Syrian refugee children live in Lebanon — forced to flee the crisis in their homeland, and to leave their education behind.

In the last year alone, more than 200,000 were brought back into school — thanks to a unique collaboration between the Lebanese government, international donors including the UK, and UNICEF.

Getting every Syrian refugee and host community child back into education was a key aim of the Supporting Syria and the Region conference that was held in London on 4 February.

The conference was co-hosted by the UK, Germany, Kuwait, Norway, and the United Nations, and secured over $11 billion in pledges to help support Syrians. It committed that by the end of the 2016/17 school year 1.7 million children — all refugee children and vulnerable children in host communities — will be in quality education with equal access for girls and boys.

The conference also committed to increasing access to learning for the 2.1 million children out of school in Syria itself.

But, as Mustafa’s case shows, there is much to be done.

“Education is very important,” he says. “If the situation was different, I would go to school.

“What do you expect my future to be like?”