Tent Classrooms and Rising Costs Strain Gaza Families Striving to Educate Children Amid Ruins

In makeshift displacement camps across the central Gaza Strip, impoverished families are navigating severe economic distress and persistent military strikes as they struggle to keep their children learning after nearly three years of continuous conflict.

Inside a crowded encampment in Deir el-Balah, Khadija Abu Qados, a 39-year-old mother, prepares her 11-year-old daughter, Jouri, for another day of classes. The family has resided in the displacement camp since their home in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of northern Gaza was reduced to rubble during an offensive on Gaza City.

Jouri and her 14-year-old sister, Ritaj, take their daily lessons at the Elyaa’ School, a community initiative operating entirely beneath fabric tents. Inside these improvised spaces, conventional educational furnishings are almost entirely absent; students gather on thin mattresses and worn rugs spread over the bare ground, enduring suffocating heat without fans or air conditioning.

To support the volunteer instructors who run the facility, the school requests a nominal monthly fee of 30 shekels—roughly $8—for each child. While this is significantly lower than private school tuition, the modest expense remains a heavy financial burden for displaced families forced to prioritize dwindling funds for food, clean water, and basic survival.

Before the hostilities escalated, Abu Qados sent her daughters to an UNRWA-operated school in Gaza City, where both girls performed well and earned praise for their academic achievements. Although she dreams of enrolling them in a well-equipped private institution, the family’s economic reality makes that ambition impossible.

While Abu Qados commends the dedication of the volunteer instructors who are working to help her children make up for lost classroom time, she remains heartbroken by the severe deprivation surrounding their education. She noted that sitting on bare floors without proper desks or seats falls far short of an acceptable learning environment.

Widespread shortages and sharp inflation have made even the simplest school supplies difficult to acquire. Abu Qados pointed out that she can barely afford basic stationery, as the price of an ordinary notebook has climbed to between four and six shekels.

The daily hardships facing the Abu Qados family mirror an unprecedented education emergency across the Palestinian enclave. According to data released by UNICEF, approximately 700,000 children between the ages of four and 17 have been deprived of formal, face-to-face schooling for nearly three consecutive academic years.

The physical infrastructure of Gaza's school network has suffered catastrophic damage. Assessment records indicate that just two percent of school facilities remain fully intact, while 93 percent require extensive reconstruction or major structural repairs, leaving about 420,000 children—or three out of every five—without access to in-person instruction.

Compounding the logistical devastation is the ongoing peril of airstrikes, which remain an everyday reality for families. At least 300 children have been killed since a ceasefire framework was introduced last October, an ongoing danger underscored recently when eight-year-old Wafaa Akila and her father were killed in a strike while traveling home from school in western Gaza.

Faced with a dismantled institutional system, educators and local communities have organized grassroots alternatives. Noha Khadra, a former teacher with a decade of educational experience, established the Elyaa’ School in January under the official supervision of the Ministry of Education.

The field school has experienced a surge in registration, enrolling more than 1,100 students despite operating with a modest team of only 40 volunteer teachers and staff members. Chalkboards are in poor condition, and the severe lack of desks means many children still complete their work while sitting on floor pads.

Khadra explained that the initial nine months of managing the field school have been grueling and emotionally draining. She and her volunteer colleagues frequently purchase basic pens and notebooks from their own pockets to ensure that children arriving without supplies can still participate in lessons.

To cope with the financial limitations of the initiative, the school relies on mutual aid models. Zahra Saleh, who works as a kindergarten teacher at the tent school, receives a small fee for her labor while having the tuition fees waived entirely for her own children.

Although the Ministry of Education has scheduled the official school year to formally commence on September 19, displaced families and volunteer teachers continue to shoulder the burden of sustaining education amidst ruins, acute poverty, and constant instability.