"My wish is that the third secondary grade is opened in our school and the necessary teaching staff—male and female—are available to teach us, so that I can complete my education here, as it is difficult for me to go to other schools far from the village." This is what Muhsina said, a student in the second secondary grade in the scientific section at Noor Al-Qur'an School in the village of "Beit Al-Ahmar" in Sanhan district, the village and hometown of former President Ali Saleh.
Noor Al-Qur’an School includes female students from the two villages of Beit Al-Ahmar and Al-Sareen, and from other remote areas. Muhsina’s father is one of the parents who pays community contributions in exchange for the continuation of their children’s education, as he spends six thousand riyals per month on her behalf and on her siblings. Adding that “this amount is not easy for my parents, especially with the inability of the school to provide the school curriculum, of which I only have an Arabic language book” Muhsina said.
From Crisis to Merger
In fact, Sanhan schools in general and, in particular, Noor Al-Quran school, suffer from marginalization that extends even to the curriculum. In addition to the scarcity of teachers and the lack of basic services to create a favorable learning environment for students, even at their minimal levels.
Badriya Ali Mohammed, the Arabic language teacher at the school, enumerates some of the factors that caused the school to be marginalized, saying: "Basically, the girls' school was separate from the boys' school, as its name was Al-Najah School. Where together with the Noor Al-Qur'an school, they formed a complex. We have had only five female teachers since 2009; the number increased later, but our school and the boys' school Noor Al-Quran were treated as one school, in which priority was given to boys. We were given only the surplus of their books; even the educational instructors and mentors were reaching their school, unlike us, and the inspection visits by the education officials are exclusive to them. On top of this, girls are not able to complete their education like their male companions, as there is no room for this due to the traditions of society. Therefore, education is available to female students only up to the sixth grade of the primary school.”
"In order to end this marginalization, we demanded to merge the two schools completely, despite the fierce opposition from the administration and some parents. However, the approval of our parents, as female teachers, was a decisive factor in pushing for the acceptance of this idea. Subsequently, the two schools became one school until 2022," Badriya added.
It is worth mentioning that the number of male and female students at the school reached 223 students, including 116 male students out of the total number, while the number of female students reached 107, with an average of one classroom for each grade from the first primary to the second secondary.
Curriculum Deficiency
In addition, changing the content of the school curriculum constituted an additional crisis, as there are two editions available: the old one and the new one, whose contents were added and changed, which created a state of confusion and chaos.
In this regard, Noah, a social education teacher, tells Khuyut: "Students have different editions of the curriculum; some of them have the 2006 edition, and others have the 2015 edition. There are significant differences between the editions that lead to contradictory information among students." Besides, the share of Noor Al-Qur’an School in the curriculum is only 6%; that is, 50 books for 223 students.
For his part, Mohammed Musleh, the English teacher at the school, says: "The available books, for example, in the English subject, are only the Course books and are no longer teachable, but as for the Workbook copies, they are almost damaged".
The Struggle of Getting to School
Teachers suffer from the difficulty of getting to school, as some of them come from the capital, Sana'a, and from distant villages, in light of the interruption of salaries, which increases the burden on teachers. In this issue, Mohammed Musleh says: "I take daily internal transportation in Sana'a, and since I live on Baynon Street, I have to go on two buses until I reach Al-Huthaili Street at 7:30, then I take the school bus allocated by the community contribution."
Likewise, some students also face the hardship of getting to school. In this aspect, a first-grade high school student tells Khuyut: "We leave the village of Al-Darm at dawn, and we continue walking for about three kilometers until we reach the school, because the school in our village is from the first to the ninth grade only, and it does not have a high secondary education.
The contribution Mostly Goes to Fuel Expenditures
The teacher, Badriya, notes that the community contribution for each student in the school is estimated at two thousand riyals for 230 students, of whom 20 were excluded due to their difficult financial conditions. In addition to reducing the amount for families with more than three students, which means that what is collected from the social contribution is very little. Besides, 130,000 riyals are spent monthly as rent for the bus that transports teachers. However, this amount is only in the event that fuel is available; if it is not, then the amount is doubled, and it is spent from the amount collected on the needs of the school in terms of stationery, whiteboard pens, photocopy paper, ink, maintenance, and other operating expenses.
More, the two brothers, Dhahban and Abdullah Al-Ashwal, stopped going to school because their family was unable to pay 4,000 riyals. As Dhahban tells "Khuyut": "I was studying at a school in the village of Shaa’san in the fourth grade, and my brother Abdullah was in the second grade at Noor Al-Quran School in our village. My father used to work on a motorcycle and used to buy our books one by one. But after that, my father disappeared, and my grandfather, who depends on raising sheep, could not afford to continue our education due to the illness and the death of a large number of sheep."
“We had to stop school this year to help my grandfather herd the sheep, as he cannot catch up with them when they run away because of the pain in his knee,” Dhahban concluded.
"Some of the volunteer teachers are high school graduates or holders of a bachelor's degree, who are not qualified to teach, but we have to accept them to cover the existing deficit. However, the results of the teacher's lack of qualification appear clearly at the students' levels, as they reach the intermediate preparatory stage without being able to read and write properly."
Lack of Volunteers Competence
Teacher Badriya points out the incompetence of some of the volunteers, including the high school graduates and the bachelor's degree holders, who are not qualified to teach, adding: "But we have to accept them to cover the existing deficit." Badriya continues: "The results of the teachers' lack of qualification appear clearly at the students' levels, as they reach the intermediate preparatory stage without being able to read and write properly."
Similarly, Al-Ainy, one of the school employees, summarizes some of the challenges by saying: "Among the challenges that we face in rural schools in general and in Noor Al-Qur'an school in particular is the absence of the necessary educational means to convey information, especially since there are subjects that depend mainly on applied activities and exercises. In addition to the absence of the sports activities and games."
Prolonged Suffering
Likewise, Al-Darm village school suffers from the same problems that Noor Al-Qur’an school suffers from. This is confirmed by Abdul Ghani Taher, a parent of a female student and a volunteer teacher at the village school. He told "Khuyut": "The school lacks teachers of scientific subjects, because when a volunteer was accredited for a science subject, the Education Office enrolled him into a 40-day course in the first semester and a 40-day course in the second semester. Hence, this caused a gab in the subject classes, as a result of which the school schedule and the level of the students were affected alike, and the same was the case with the subject of mathematics and its volunteer teacher."
Furthermore, teachers at Al-Darm School work voluntarily despite the difficult circumstances they face. Whereas a teacher's wife fell last year and broke her leg. So the people in the mosque of the village collected a sum of money for him to help him; however, he came out of this situation sad and broken.
Dilemma of Displacement
Ibrahim's mother, a displaced woman, tells Khuyut about the reason she took refuge with her family to live in the school by saying, "We took refuge in this school because of the war. At first we lived in an abandoned house, which the people referred us to, but its owner, who lives in the Al-Hada area, gave us a choice between leaving it or paying rent, which we couldn't do, so we turned to school, and this is the third year we've been living there."
For his part, DaifAllah Al-Ashwal narrates his suffering with the displacement to "Khuyut", saying: "We have been living in the school for four years, after returning from our first displacement, from our village Beit Al-Ahmar to the village of Al-Jahshi. I was in the past a soldier in the military, but now I work in a factory earning 40,000 riyals, which is not enough to live until I pay rent for a house or for educating my two daughters, who are supposed to be in the first and second grades of primary school. I do not have the ability to provide for their education requirements, so the situation remained as it is.”
The burden of displacement posed an additional challenge to the progress of the educational process, as the former girls' branch was filled with displaced people. In addition to the presence of new displaced people in the boy’s school, who took refuge there because their homes were destroyed.
