An initiative on school drop-out in Palestine

The Educational Forum Association and the al-Razi Association for Culture and Society in Jerusalem concluded the events of the initiative “School dropout in Palestine, between the occupation's responsibility and society's role”, in partnership with Pal-Think for Strategic Studies, within the project “Strengthening cooperation among Palestinian local community organisations for strengthening the future Palestinian state” implemented by Pal-Think for Strategic Studies. The initiative comprised a series of consultative meetings and joint workshops between the city of Jerusalem and the Nuseirat camp, aimed at discussing the phenomenon of school dropout and the extent of its spread in our Palestinian society — attended by representatives of the education directorates in Jerusalem, the Jerusalem suburbs, and the Deir al-Balah governorate, in addition to representatives of the teachers and counsellors of the government schools and UNRWA, and a number of international and local institutions with an interest in the field of education. The attendees likewise included representatives of parents and of students from several basic and secondary school stages. The workshops discussed the responsibilities of the occupation, of society, and of the executive bodies in the spread of the dropout phenomenon, and reviewed statistics of the utmost importance showing the rates and numbers of dropout students in each of the education directorates, taking the views of those who own the problem on the causes of the variation of those rates among the directorates. The discussions likewise shed light on the occupation's practices and the methods it uses to obstruct the course of education in Palestine. The discussions concluded with the necessity of improving education's quality and providing supportive frames and protection networks in the family and society, as well as in the school, aimed at protecting students from falling into the trap of dropout. In addition, it is important to expose the practices the occupation carries out to obstruct the educational process and make difficult Palestinians' access to any education not following the Israeli ministry of education in the city of Jerusalem. Worth mentioning is that the discussions in the dialogue and participatory sessions ran between the two sides in the homeland's two halves over Skype simultaneously, which enriched the discussion to be a unified Palestinian discussion. These sessions likewise served as the base the al-Razi and Educational Forum associations used to produce a research paper of the utmost importance titled “The effect of the occupation's policies in strengthening school dropout in Palestine”. Pal-Think for Strategic Studies will publish these research papers — produced by the institutions that carried out their initiatives within the project “Strengthening cooperation among Palestinian local community organisations for strengthening the future Palestinian state” — in a book at the end of the project's implementation period.