In Gaza, hundreds of thousands of students are forced to miss school for the second year in a row

Sarah Qanan’s goal was to study medicine and become a doctor.

Two years ago, she was a star student preparing for her high school final exams but the outbreak of Israel’s war in Gaza in October 2023 turned her dream into ashes.

Today, the 18-year-old lives in a sweltering tent in the Gaza Strip with her family.

Her only hope now is to stay alive.

"We, as students, have suffered from the war. We've been suffering for two years. Our lives have been on hold for two years", Qanan said.

"Our lives, which were filled with good dreams, have turned into nothingness."

Qanan is one of more than 650,000 Gaza students who have had no access to education since the start of the war, according to the UN children’s agency, UNICEF.

When the war began, schools were turned into shelters for displaced families but Israeli bombings did not spare learning spaces.

UNICEF found that more than 95% of Gaza schools have been partially or totally destroyed.

The Israeli army has demolished all 12 universities in Gaza. 

"This war has been extremely difficult for Palestinian society as a whole, especially after the Israeli occupation's systematic destruction of universities and educational institutions, including public secondary and elementary schools", said Ibrahim Qanan, Sarah's father and a Palestinian journalist.

"Even kindergartens were destroyed and crushed under Israeli bulldozers and tanks."

Nearly 40,000 students were unable to take university entry exams that largely determine their career prospects.

It’s the first time in decades that the exams were not administered in Gaza.

During a six-week ceasefire in January and February, some 600 learning spaces provided lessons for around 173,000 children, according to UNICEF. But since March, when Israel ended the truce with a surprise bombardment, nearly half have shut down.

Without functioning schools, younger children also miss out on basic skills like reading and simple arithmetic.

Some parents try to make up for lost time by teaching their children.

Hadeel Abu Lihia, a displaced woman in the Muwasi zone in Khan Younis, tries to give her children lessons inside their tent but said "their minds are still stuck in the year the war began when they stopped going to school."

"I am very worried, and this is a huge problem. I fear for my children's future", she said.

UNICEF found that 87% of Gaza schools will require significant reconstruction before they can function again.

Ibrahim Qanan said his family did everything it could to support Sarah's ambition to study medicine, only to see it go up in smoke when the war broke out.

“The war stunned us and turned our life upside down", the father of six said. “Our dreams and hopes were buried in the rubble of our home.”