A toll on kids’ education

Koubar, who fears she will one day no longer be able to afford sending her three young children to public school, helping two of them, Acil (right) and Jawad, with their homework in their apartment in Beirut. — AFP

RANA Hariri doesn’t know when she’ll be able to send her children back to school, as Lebanon’s grinding economic crisis thrusts the fate of public education into uncertainty.

Lack of funding for the school system has precipitated repeated teachers’ strikes and school closures, resulting in children being increasingly pulled out of the formal learning system, and in some cases being forced to work.