Fearful return to school for Iraq

As some of the estimated six million-plus children registered in Iraq for primary and secondary schools began drifting back to classes this week, concerns over their security remained uppermost in the minds of parents, teachers and pupils.

Sahar, who lives in a mainly Sunni area of northern Baghdad, said she was considering keeping her son Abdullah, 11, at home rather than risk sending him on the perilous 5-km journey from home to school each day.

Since the construction of a massive security wall around the notoriously violent Adamiya district, Abdullah's journey has meant negotiating numerous checkpoints, dodging militias and US soldiers, as well as passing the strict controls at the entrance to the wall itself.

The journey used to take five minutes, said Sahar. Now it takes an hour or more.

Even once Abdullah is in school, his mother said, fighting on the streets has meant the violence is never far away.

"My son witnesses many murders from the window of the school," Sahar told the BBC.

"Gunmen have shot people dead in front of the school gates. I feel his behaviour is changing. I must move him from this school, I have to keep him secure."

Attendance dropping

Official figures from the Iraqi ministry of high education show that even before the escalation of sectarian violence in mid-2006, one in six Iraqi children did not attend primary school. Attendance is expected to fall by a further 15% this term.

Muhammed, 12, lives in a mainly Shia district on the western side of the Tigris river.

He said he found it hard to concentrate in class because of what was happening outside the school.

"I like to go to school, but because of the explosions I can't focus," he said.

Some of his friends have already left for the relative safety of neighbouring Syria, he added.

Many teachers at the school were also finding it hard to travel across the city each day, he said.

"Our history teacher left and we were without a replacement for more than a month," he added.

According to the Iraqi government, as of February 2006, nearly 180 teachers had been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion, while another 3,250 had fled the country.

A senior education ministry official said that the number of teachers who left last year was "almost double" those who left in 2005.

Meanwhile, less than half of secondary school-leavers managed to pass their end-of-year exams in 2006 (excluding the more secure Kurdish regions).

Sectarian divide

While some students and teachers flee because of specific threats against them, many more leave because of the general climate of insecurity, heightened by a deepening sectarian divide in many parts of the country, which has spilled over into the classrooms.

Muhammed's older brother, Ali, who is 18 and in his last year at secondary school, said that while "most students don't think about Sunni or Shia, some people are afraid about being in a school dominated by Shia."

He said that three of his Sunni school-friends had recently left the school.

"They're worried about being killed or kidnapped, so they prefer to go to school in their own neighbourhood," he added.

Abbass Sabti, a primary-school headmaster in a relatively quiet area of eastern Baghdad, said he tried to avoid his school being caught up in the sectarian divide.

"We Iraqis always used to live together and I try to reflect that at my school," he told the BBC.

But he said that the higher intake of pupils this year, mainly due to large numbers of families arriving in the area having been displaced from their homes by the sectarian strife elsewhere, was causing other sorts of problems.

"We need more classrooms, we need electricity at the school, we even have to spend our own money to pay for cleaners," he said.

"I don't know why the ministry doesn't spend more money on schools," the headmaster added.