Education Under Occupation Access To Education In The Occupied Palestinian Territory

Includes statistical tables.

Deals with effect of the repression and dispersion of the Palestinians on their access to education, the quality of the education they receive, and their response to it, focusing on Israel (within its 1948 borders and the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza Strip), and Lebanon. Also briefly examines the way in which other Palestinian communities in the Arab world have evolved and how they have been affected by national educational policies in the host countries and the role of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in providing education to the Palestinians.

Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations in Beirut has issued the English version of its book entitled “The Suffering of the Palestinian Student under the Israeli Occupation,” prepared by Hayat al-Dada and edited by Dr. Mohsen M. Saleh and Rana Sa‘adah. This book is the ninth in the “Am I not a Human?” series through which Al-Zaytouna Centre seeks to provide a comprehensive picture of the suffering of the Palestinian people caused by the Israeli occupation. This is done in a style that addresses the mind and the heart, within a scientific, systematic and documented frame. This 95-page book addresses the suffering of the Palestinian student under Israeli occupation. It reviews the most prominent international legislation related to the right to education in peace and war, the impact of Israeli policies aimed at keeping the Palestinian people ignorant, and the impact of daily attacks, the siege, and the Separation Wall on the Palestinian student. The book highlights Israeli aggression against Palestinian students through the use of roadblocks and checkpoints. This is in addition to the Separation Wall in the West Bank that added to the students’ suffering, which varies between physical inspection, physical and verbal attacks, blocking the arrival of students and teachers to their schools and universities, and impeding the arrival of school supplies. Furthermore, imprisoned students are deprived of their right to education. The book brings to light Israeli practices with respect to Palestinian curriculums. Israel has implemented policies that would let the Palestinian people be ignorant of many facets of their history. Thus it has deleted or amended parts of Palestinian curriculums to bring them in line with its occupation objectives. It separated the students from their heroic past and distorted their history. In Jerusalem, Israel changed the Arab curriculums to suit the occupation’s requirement. It introduced the matriculation “Bagrut” certificate in place of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) “Tawjihiya”, unrecognized by Hebrew universities. It froze the construction of school buildings and put various obstacles in the way of obtaining school building permits, as it did not take into account the natural population increase, thus causing a high rate of overcrowding in classrooms. The book also speaks about the low quality of education due to Israeli suspension of schools and the taking of security measures regarding them, in an effort to terrorize students and teachers. The book refers to a number of wars waged by Israel against the Gaza Strip, which shook the Palestinian educational establishment to the core, in addition to great damages caused by its blockade of Gaza Strip since 2007.

This book address media and education in the context of Palestine and Israel. They provide insights and provocative analysis of the status quo in education, including language teaching, educational policy and research, media representations and reporting in Middle East and U.S. and different models of dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis.

There are 1.3 million Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel, who encompass 19.4% of the country's total population. There are another 3, 762, 005 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip whose educational experiences and opportunities continue to be affected by Israeli occupation. Researchers have documented institutionalized political, economic, and social discrimination, as well as the Palestinian minority's lower levels of income, educational opportunity, employment, property ownership, and community infrastructure and development. The state-run educational system, which is subdivided into Jewish and Arab systems, has been essential in creating and maintaining these gaps. The April 2006 issue of American Behavioral Scientist explores the role of Palestinian Arab education as a public policy tool and reviews key issues regarding how education shapes culture, individual and communal development, social stratification, economics, and politics in Israel and the occupied Palestinian Territories. The challenging articles in this provocative issue examine a far-reaching array of contentious topics, including: The historical context of Palestinian Arab education (Abu-Saad and Champagne) Inequalities in public funding, budget allocation, curriculum, and lack of meaningful Palestinian involvement in the decision making processes that have led to considerable gaps between the qualitative level of Palestinian and Jewish education, and how the Israeli Supreme Court is upholding this "unequal" educational opportunities standard. (Jabareen) Despite Arab communities having a generally lower socio-economic status than their counterparts, there are significantly fewer of the unique special support programs designed for "disadvantaged" students. The various nuances, implications, and questions used to explore the sources of inequality and how to effect social change are analyzed using three generations of critical feminist thought. (Golan-Agnan) The challenges of maintaining identity and culture within a mainstream school system that emphasizes values and education of the national community to the exclusion of other perspectives (Abu-Saad) The effect of the political legacy of oppression, occupation, and de-humanization on Palestinian youth living under Israeli occupation (Shalhoub-Kevorkian) The role of Palestinian universities as a place where Palestinians can articulate their national identity, engage in resistance to Israeli occupation, and build the nation of Palestine. (Bruhn) Whether one agrees or not with the controversial views expressed in this exceptional issue, these six articles highlight key educational issues that must be faced, debated, and grappled with in order to build the foundations of a lasting peace between Palestinians and Israelis This issue should be in the library of everyone interested in Middle East Studies, International Studies, International Politics, International Law, Human Rights, Educational Policy, Sociology of Education, and Social Change.

This thesis is an exploration of learning environments in the West Bank of the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) as administered by private, refugee and public school systems. In considering the insularity of learning environments in the OPT, this thesis finds that despite increased school construction since 1994, public and refugee student drop-out rates have increased, enrollment rates have decreased, academic achievement is low, and students suffer from stress. It is hypothesized that if schools are conceptualized as part of a broader learning environment, then the socio-spatial issues impacting student success may be improved. To test this hypothesis, learning environments in the OPT are examined with a two-fold methodology: historical and architectural. The two-fold analysis utilizes a conceptual framework, where child, building, neighborhood context, and education system, are understood as the four components of a learning environment. The historical analysis is framed from the Late-Ottoman era until today and follows changing theories of education in parallel with the changing relationship between schools and the socio-spatial reality of the conflict. Results from the historical analysis indicate that educational institutions often cannot operate during times of crisis, leading local family and teacher networks to develop informal education systems in unconventional spaces. It is determined that learning environments must be able to adapt to the conflict and must embrace local communities as architectural, spatial, and social resources. This finding serves as a critical foundation for the architectural analysis. The architectural analysis uses data collected from field work at 24 schools in the West Bank in August of 2012 through informal interviews with locals, photography, and journaling. The data reveal that the socio-spatial contexts of each school are unique due in part to divisions of the land. In order to limit the number of variables, special focus was given to three schools in Ramallah, which is a unique enclave that encompasses within it the socio-spatial realities of other enclaves in the West Bank. Taking from the lessons of each school system, it is concluded that new learning environments in the Occupied Palestinian Territories must positively respond to the bleak structures of the occupation by becoming programmatically diverse, architecturally innovative, and spatially integrated in order to create new and less insular cultural centers of which the students and communities can be proud. This thesis concludes with recommendations for educationalists, architects and development professionals that stem from revelations in the historical analysis and results from the architectural analysis. Learning environments must span outwards allowing for an expansion of school resources, a broadening of learning experiences for youth, and the unification of Palestinians in order to improve the socio-spatial disorder of the occupation.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) operates one of the largest nongovernmental school systems in the Middle East. Palestine refugees in UNRWA schools are achieving higher-than-average learning outcomes in spite of the adverse circumstances they live under. This study uses a mixed methods research approach to address the complexity of the research question and its exploratory nature, namely, How do UNRWA schools continually and consistently outperform public schools? This study used the following data collection techniques: econometric techniques to analyze learning achievement data from international and national assessments; the Systems Approach for Better Education Results tools were used to assess different system components, such as teacher effectiveness, school autonomy, and student assessments; Stallings classroom observations provided a structured method to compare teachers' and students' interactions; qualitative data collected through interviews captured the lived experiences of a sample of students. Contrary to what might be expected from a resource-constrained administration serving refugee students who continually face a multitude of adversities, UNRWA students outperform public schools in the three regions-- West Bank and Gaza and Jordan-- by a year's worth of learning. The achievement is a result of the way these schools recruit, prepare, and support teachers; because of instructional practices and pedagogy in the classroom; and because of school leadership, accountability, and mutual support. This has created a distinguished learning community centered on the student. Of note: • UNRWA selects, prepares, and supports its education staff to pursue high learning outcomes. • Time-on-task is high in UNRWA schools, and is used more effectively than in public schools.

International Education Inquiries is a book series dedicated to realizing the global vision of The United Nations’ (2015) Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. As resolved by the UN General Assembly (on 25 September 2015; see UN, 2015 October): The 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets which we are announcing today demonstrate the scale and ambition of this new universal Agenda. They seek to build on the Millennium Development Goals and complete what they did not achieve. They seek to realize the human rights of all and to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. They are integrated and indivisible and balance the three dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental. The United Nations' goals and targets will stimulate action over the next decade in areas of critical importance for humanity and the planet... We are determined to end poverty and hunger, in all their forms and dimensions, and to ensure that all human beings can fulfil their potential in dignity and equality and in a healthy environment. This vision includes to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (SDG4, UN, 2017). The founding co-editors seek to provide a forum for the diverse voices of scholars and practitioners from across the globe asking questions about transforming the vision of Education 2030 into a reality. Published chapters reflect a variety of formats, free of methodological restrictions, involving disciplinary as well as interdisciplinary inquiries. We expect the series will be a leading forum for pioneers redefining the international professional knowledge base about the people, places, and perspectives shaping Education 2030 outcomes and the meaning of global citizen education (UNESCO, 2015). Education 2030 topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following: • Improving access to quality early childhood development, care, and pre-primary education. • Ensuring equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality education. • Increasing the number of youth and adults who have skills relevant for sustainable living and livelihoods. • Ensuring equal access for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, and children in vulnerable situations. • Achieving levels of literacy and numeracy required to engage in communities and employment. • Acquiring the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including: education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship education, and the appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contributions to sustainable development. • Providing safe, non-violent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all. • Recruiting, preparing, supporting, and retaining quality teachers.

This book makes a major contribution to educational research and literature in exploring process of educational reform in the period of Political transition in Palestine. It is aimed at describing the journey of changing Palestinian primary education and the legacy of establishing the first national education system in Palestine as well as the introduction of a number of educational reforms. The introduction of new educational reforms was urgently needed in order to achieve quality education in Palestinian schools. This was particularly crucial after the prolonged military occupation, which left the education system in a perilous situation and lowered education achievements for a whole generation. The book explores an attempt to retrieve Palestinian education after a prolonged period of military occupation and to rescue the education system from collapsing. It tells the story of reshaping national identity and reviving Palestinian heritage and culture. Therefore, this book is the first one of its kind that captures the story of education reform against a background of struggle that should not be forgotten. It documents a unique period of time in Palestinian history and highlights the beginning of an education system in Palestinians’ hands. Moreover, this book presents real life stories from Palestinian schools and shows the real struggle over power and control in the education system in Palestine.