Palestinian children in East Jerusalem face classroom shortage, says report

Almost half attend private and unofficial schools as city spends four times as much on elementary schooling for Jewish students

Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 24 August 2010

"Almost half the Palestinian children in East Jerusalem are forced to attend private or unofficial schools because of a lack of classroom facilities provided by the Israeli authorities, according to a new report.

Six per cent of Palestinian children are not enrolled in school at all, says Failed Grade, a report published today by the Association of Civil Rights in Israel and Ir Amim, a Jerusalem-based rights organisation.

It estimates that East Jerusalem schools are short of around 1,000 classrooms, and says that only 39 were built in the last academic year. "The continuing neglect of the Arab education system in Jerusalem has caused a severe shortage of classrooms. The result is that in the 2010-11 school year the families of thousands of Palestinian children will have to pay large sums of money to get the education they should have been getting for free," it said.....

The crisis is resulting in low academic performance and a high drop-out level among a population with an "alarming" poverty rate, according to the report. This can be seen in the "dozens of high-school-age Palestinian boys working in the markets and the warehouses ... to the dozens of grade school-age children scrambling between the cars at some of the city's main intersections selling various goods to drivers."....."