Nearly six million Iraqi children are going back to the classroom this week. While UNICEF hails the return to schools as a remarkable achievement,” the agency is also calling for more aid.
The damaging toll of displacement and the pervasive insecurity in Iraq have cost many of the country’s schoolchildren their education: according to figures released by Iraq’s Ministry of Education, only 40 per cent of final year students in Iraq (excluding the Kurdistan Region) passed their high school exams during the first examination session of 2007, compared to last year’s pass rate of 60 per cent, UNICEF said.