For the new school year, 25 new schools for providing education in Kurdish will be opened in Shingal.
22 of the new schools will be primary schools and 3 will be for middle schools (7, 8 and 9th grades). According to the Duhok Education Department, most of the schools have been built by international aid organizations, and a number of them by the Kurdistan Regional Government.
The return of a large number of IDPs necessitated the building of the new schools
Shahab Ahmad, deputy head of Shingal Education Department (which is part of Duhok Education Department), told KirkukNow: “The return of a large number of IDPs necessitated the building of the new schools.”
According to the Shingal Education Department, for the 2019-2020 school year, there were only 18 schools available for education in Kurdish, which had room for 5500 students.
80 displaced teachers from shingal, who currently resides at camps in Duhok, have expressed their willingness to go back to Shingal to teach.
“We have requested the Duhok Education Department to let schools in Shingal take their normal course, because there is a low [COVID-19] infection rate in Shingal,” daid Shahab Ahmad.
From the start of the COVID-19 outbreak to date, only 16 infection cases have been registered, all of which have recovered.
The schools in Shingal don’t have high numbers of students per class, that’s the risk [of Coronavirus spread] is low
Shahab added: “The schools in Shingal don’t have high numbers of students per class, that’s the risk [of Coronavirus spread] is low. We can distribute the students among the schools in a manner that it wouldn’t have an effect on the spread of the Coronavirus. This is better than holding online classes, because we don’t have adequate internet connection here.”
Shingal Education requests the government and aid organizations to make an effort in providing material for the schools, including desks and books among others.
School for 12th graders started on 27 September. In the coming days, the school year for 1st and 2nd graders will also start.
Shahab Ahmad said: “Duhok Education has informed us that if we can manage to run the schools in the normal way, they would have no objections.”
