Child Rights

Gaza’s children return to class in tents and ruins

Palestinian students attend their first day of the new school year inside a tent classroom at a school in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. [Ramadan Abed/Reuters]

Displaced Palestinian student Samar Abu Salmi, 15, reads a list of names displayed in a school in Khan Younis. [Ramadan Abed/Reuters]

Tents for displaced Palestinians cover the yard of a school-turned-shelter in Khan Younis. [Ramadan Abed/Reuters]

Palestinian children sit in their classroom on the first day of the new academic year at a United Nations-run school in Nuseirat, the central Gaza Strip. [Jehad Alshrafi/AP Photo]

A destroyed UN-run school in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, on the first day of the new academic year. [Jehad Alshrafi/AP Photo]

Palestinian students attend their first day of the new school year at a school run by the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip. [Mahmoud Issa/Reuters]

The return to face-to-face education comes after nearly three years of disruption due to Israel's genocidal war, which has seen almost all of Gaza's population displaced and most buildings in the enclave destroyed. [Ramadan Abed/Reuters]

Clothes hang out to dry as displaced Palestinians live in a school-turned-shelter in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip. [Ramadan Abed/Reuters]

About 541,000 students returned to education in Gaza when the new school year began on September 19, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education. This comes after a decrease in - but not an end to - violence following an October 2025 "ceasefire". [Mahmoud Issa/Reuters]

In January, the ministry said 317,332 students were attending face-to-face educational spaces, schools and initiatives in Gaza. Another 120,000 were enrolled in virtual schools taught by teachers from the West Bank. [Ramadan Abed/Reuters]

A Palestinian student looks into his classroom while he attends the first day of the new academic year at a UN-run school in Nuseirat, in the central Gaza Strip. [Jehad Alshrafi/AP Photo]

Nearly 98 percent of school buildings in Gaza have been damaged since October 2023, with more than 93 percent requiring major rehabilitation or full reconstruction, according to UNICEF. [Jehad Alshrafi/AP Photo]