Iraq’s crumbling school system

A pupil ringing a makeshift school bell hanging from a palm tree at the mixed-gender al-Tafawuq elementary school in the Khan Saad district in Diyala province. — AFP

IN a small village in central Iraq, children cram into dilapidated classrooms in a converted farmhouse with open-air toilets, a symptom of how education has been neglected in the oil-rich but war-weary country.

“We close the school when it rains because water leaks through the roof,” said Oudai Abdallah, director of a public elementary school in Bani Saad district, 40km north of Baghdad.