For third year running, over 660,000 children in Gaza out of school amid warnings of a lost generation

660,000 children in Gaza without schools.. Special report prepared by: Sahar Dahliz

While schools have opened in the West Bank, more than 660,000 children in the Gaza Strip remain deprived of their basic right to education.

For the third consecutive year, this is due to the ongoing Israeli war and its catastrophic impact on educational infrastructure.

In Gaza, where destruction and tears have replaced bells and schoolbags, children are not finding their way to classrooms but to shelters, hospitals or even graves. Schools have been turned into shelters for the displaced or reduced to rubble by bombardment, and teachers have been killed or displaced. It is a humanitarian and educational reality without precedent.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said more than 75% of its schools in the Gaza Strip are unfit for teaching, either because of damage or because they are being used as shelters. It warned of the complete collapse of the education system, citing a total inability to provide suitable alternatives amid the ongoing siege and the ban on bringing in materials and supplies.

UNRWA pointed to the deaths of more than 17,000 school pupils and 1,261 university students, along with hundreds of staff, and said children in Gaza are living through one of the darkest humanitarian crises in the world. The war is not only against people but against the future of an entire generation.

Limited UN initiatives do not fill the gap

Despite international efforts, initiatives remain modest compared with the scale of the crisis. UNRWA launched a “Return to Learning” program in about 397 temporary learning centres, but it covered only 50,000 children — less than 10% of the students registered with the agency.

It also implemented a distance learning programme that reached roughly 277,000 students. However, continuous power and internet outages have rendered it almost ineffective.

Rosalia Bolin, UNICEF’s spokesperson, said after visiting the Strip:

“No child should have to choose between risking their life to get food or dying of hunger.”

A compounded crisis: education under the weight of hunger

Children’s suffering does not stop at deprivation of education; it extends to an acute food crisis. In July 2025, UNICEF revealed that child deaths from malnutrition rose by 54% between April and July, warning that “hundreds of thousands of children are living on the brink of famine.”

UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said: “An entire generation of Gaza’s children is at risk of being lost, not only through loss of life but through loss of the right to learn and grow.”

West Bank: education under fire

Despite the opening of the school year in the West Bank, the education sector remains weighed down by threats and suffering. The spokesman for the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Sadiq al-Khoudour, announced the postponement of the start of the 2025/2026 school year to Monday, September 8, 2025, except for Jerusalem schools which will begin on September 1. He said the decision came as a result of the ongoing financial crisis caused by the Israeli siege and the siphoning of Palestinian tax revenues, which affected school readiness.

<p>In light of this postponement, education in the West Bank remains under fire. More than 140 students have been killed, and hundreds of students and teachers arrested since the start of the offensive, according to the Ministry of Education. Raids and military operations have also displaced more than 22,000 Palestinians from the Tulkarem and Nur Shams camps, including thousands of students who have been prevented from continuing their education.

660,000 children in Gaza without schools

Warnings of a “lost generation”

UN experts described the targeting of schools in Gaza as “a war crime and a direct attack on children”. A joint study by the University of Cambridge and UNRWA found that the war could delay educational attainment for Gaza’s children by two to five years, raising the prospect of an entire generation without meaningful education.

Palestinian children face one of the world’s most severe education crises, their right to learn reduced to a lost luxury amid a war targeting their lives and future. With UN warnings of a “lost generation”, Gaza’s children are being left to a grim fate in which childhood is being extinguished and dreams are buried under the rubble of international silence.