The principal of a school for the Internally Displaced Persons IDPs in Dohuk Northern Province expelled 170 students by administrative order in one day for “unruly behavior.”
A few days ago, the principal of a primary school in the Khanki IDP camp in Dohuk expelled all 170 students from four classes of grades five and six, numbering 170 male and female students.
Hoda Khaled Markouz, director of the Nineveh Education Representative in Dohuk - who supervises schools for Nineveh IDPs- told KirkukNow, “Yes, the principal suspended 170 students in one day, but she did not expel them, but rather required them to bring their parents the next day in order to return them to their classes.”
The school that witnessed the mass expulsion is affiliated with the Arabic Studies Department and has 947 students and more than 22 teachers, including contract and volunteer lecturers.
“All the students in the fifth and sixth grades who were suspended on November 29 were informed by the principal that they were not fit to study, so she suspended them for one day and required that their families be present to return to school,” according to Sufyan Khairy, a resident of Khanki IDP camp and the uncle of one of the suspended students.
“According to what we heard, there were riots and quarrels between a number of students, and in return, the principal expelled all fifth- and sixth-graders, without exception,” Khairy says.
(Kirkuk Now) contacted the school principal for comments but he did not respond.
Khanki camp in Sumel sub-district houses more than 14,000 IDPs, most of whom are from Nineveh Governorate and from the Yazidi component, according to statistics from the Kurdistan Regional Government KRG.
Pir Alo Kachal, director of Khanki camp, told KirkukNow, “We knew what happened closely. In fact, the problem was caused by a number of students, but the principal also made a mistake by expelling this large number of students. She was supposed to expel only the problem makers.”
Nineveh Education formed a four-member committee to investigate the circumstances of the accident.
The director of the Nineveh Education Representative in Dohuk said, “The problem of this school and the students was resolved after the committee’s investigations were completed, and another person was appointed to manage the school temporarily until a new principal is chosen.”
There are more than 600,000 IDPs in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region IKR, some of whom reside in camps, 16 of which are located in Dohuk. Thousands of students attend Arabic and Kurdish schools affiliated with the Nineveh Education Directorate that were opened inside the camps.
