As dawn breaks in the town of Kafranbel (Kafr Nabl), south of Idlib, ten-year-old Hamdo Al-Yahya walks into his primary school classroom with hesitant steps. He pulls his thin jacket tightly around his small body before sitting on a cold wooden bench. His schoolbag is placed beneath his feet in a futile attempt to shield them from the concrete floor, still holding the night’s chill. In front of him, a broken window refuses to close, and the classroom door is missing altogether – leaving the room exposed to wind and rain, as though the school itself has no walls.
This scene is repeated daily in dozens of schools across Idlib and its countryside. With the arrival of winter, the absence of even the most basic educational infrastructure becomes starkly visible, raising urgent questions about where education stands among the region’s priorities.
“There is no door to close”
Speaking to +963, Hamdo says that attending school in winter has become a hardship. “The cold starts the moment I enter the classroom,” he explains. “There is no door to close, and no windows to stop the air.”
He describes spending entire lessons trying to warm his hands, sometimes unable to hold his pen or write properly. Concentration becomes almost impossible, and when rain or strong winds intensify, even hearing the teacher becomes difficult.
“I get tired quickly,” he says. “I want the lesson to end as fast as possible – not because I don’t like studying, but because I can’t stand sitting in this cold.”
Thirteen-year-old Abdulrahman Al-Qaziz shares a similar experience. For him, the cold dominates his thoughts during class, pushing the lesson itself into the background. “My hands freeze,” he says. “Sometimes I simply can’t write or follow what the teacher is asking.”
Attempts by teachers to shorten lessons to spare students from the cold often make matters worse. “The lesson turns into a rushed overview, without real understanding,” Abdulrahman explains, particularly as wind howls through classrooms with broken windows.
Absenteeism, he adds, has become routine. Some classmates stay away for weeks due to illness, while others are kept at home by families unwilling to expose their children to harsh conditions. “School no longer feels like a safe or comfortable place,” he says. “Especially on rainy days, when everything becomes colder and worse.”
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Learning loss and rising illness
Teachers and parents alike link the lack of heating to a rise in winter illnesses, particularly among younger pupils, alongside a noticeable decline in academic performance.
Khaled Al-Husrum, a 38-year-old father of two pupils at a school in Kafruma, south of Idlib, tells +963 that his children have suffered repeated colds and chest infections this winter. “The doctor said the cause was constant exposure to cold inside classrooms,” he explains, pointing to broken windows and missing doors that leave children sitting in freezing air for hours.
Each illness means forced absences from school and additional medical expenses – a heavy burden for families already under strain. “We face an impossible choice,” he says. “Send our children to school and risk their health or keep them home and sacrifice their education.”
For many parents, schooling has ceased to be a guaranteed right and has instead become a health risk – one they feel local education authorities have failed to address.
Fragile infrastructure, limited resources
The suffering of students in Idlib is part of a broader, long-standing fragility within the education sector. Years of conflict have left school infrastructure heavily damaged. Many schools now operating are partially restored ruins or temporary structures that lack basic safety and insulation standards.
School administrations attribute the crisis primarily to chronic funding shortages rather than deliberate neglect. One school administrator, speaking anonymously to +963, says that schools regularly submit reports outlining urgent needs, but available funding is insufficient even to cover heating and basic maintenance.
“Heating is often not treated as a priority,” the administrator explains. “Salaries and essential learning materials come first, leaving winter solutions temporary or incomplete.”
Occasional fuel distributions or makeshift heating methods provide little relief in buildings where cold air enters from every direction.
Teachers under strain
The impact of freezing classrooms extends beyond students to teachers, who find themselves working in conditions that severely undermine their ability to teach.
Mustafa Haj Suleiman, a 36-year-old Arabic language teacher in Maarat Al-Numan, describes winter classrooms as “repellent to education”. “The cold dictates the rhythm of the lesson,” he says. “We are forced to shorten explanations, cancel classroom activities, and focus only on delivering the bare minimum.”
He stresses that the problem is not merely discomfort but a direct blow to educational quality. “A child who is shivering cannot listen or participate,” he explains. “And the teacher, too, loses the ability to deliver a structured, coherent lesson.”
In some classrooms, even basic protection is absent. Rainwater seeps inside, rendering heaters ineffective where they exist at all. Attendance drops sharply, particularly among younger pupils, as families opt to keep children at home.
Suleiman warns that if this situation continues, it will produce a deep educational gap that will be difficult to reverse. “The cold is no longer a seasonal issue,” he says. “It has become a structural crisis that threatens the entire educational process.”
