While the Israeli war machine continues to kill civilians, destroy homes and infrastructure, and occupy parts of Lebanese territory, the effects of the war are not limited only to human and material losses, but extend to the foundations of coexistence, social trust, and the possibilities of building the state itself. Wars are not only measured by the number of victims and the extent of destruction, but also by their ability to reshape social relations and demographic structure, deepen disparity, and redefine who has the right to protection, resources, prosperity, and greater opportunities for a better future. This depends largely on how the state manages challenges in light of war. <\/p>\n
In the midst of this scene, the issue of education stands out as one of the most urgent and dangerous issues for the country\u2019s future and present, not only because the war has disrupted the right of hundreds of thousands of children and youth to education, but because the way to deal with education during crises reveals the nature of the political and moral choices that govern society and the state. The challenge today does not lie only in ensuring the continuity of education or protecting the school year from collapse (regardless of our definition of the criteria for a successful or collapsed school year), but rather in how to achieve this without turning education into an additional tool for reproducing inequality and division. <\/p>\n
Equity in education is a complex concept that intersects with multiple approaches: While the liberal approach focuses on equal opportunities – that is, removing formal obstacles to access to education – the equity approach goes further to demand a redistribution of resources in favor of the most disadvantaged, to compensate for what is lacking in social origin. The capabilities approach adds another dimension: providing education is not enough; it must actually enable the individual to live a life of his choice in freedom and dignity. In contrast, critical approaches from Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, the American economic theorists, (Bowles & Gintis, 1976) to Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990) – reveal that school often reproduces social inequality under the guise of the official curriculum, as it turns class privilege into individual merit and deprivation into personal deficiency. What unites these approaches, despite their differences, is their recognition that education cannot be fair in an unjust society – and that true educational justice necessarily requires addressing the social and economic structures that fuel inequality outside the school walls. <\/p>\n
The history of inequality in education in Lebanon does not begin with the economic collapse, the civil war, or the Israeli war, but rather extends to the founding moment of the formation of the Lebanese entity itself. <\/p>\n
Osama Makdisi showed in his book \u201cThe Culture of Sectarianism\u201d<\/a> how European colonialism used education as a tool to consolidate its existence by distributing educational privileges on deliberate sectarian grounds. In the absence of any Ottoman interest in educating the population, the missionaries monopolized the distribution of modern knowledge sectarianly and used it to enable it to control and colonize. This intentional disparity in opportunities was the primary mechanism for constructing ideological identities that served colonialism. Here, Maqdisi meets with Mahdi Amel in the depth of the thesis: What Maqdisi observed in the nineteenth century is the foundational moment for what Amel analyzed more than five decades ago, when he was teaching philosophy at Sidon Public High School, that the educational system in Lebanon was not built to achieve justice, but rather to protect the privileges of the dominant groups and reproduce the existing sectarian-class system. <\/p>\n From this standpoint, the weakness of formal education was not an administrative failure, but rather an intentional function: the sectarian state has no structural interest in building a unified educational system that raises class awareness and eliminates differences between regions and sects, because such a system threatens the basis on which its system is based and includes two needs. The first: the need for the sectarian leader as an intermediary to access services and rights on the one hand. The second need is to ensure the protection of the interests of the ruling class, which itself is the wealthy class that includes sectarian leaders. Given that many private schools are either semi-free or non-free or owned by sects, the private sector, which is a partner of the ruling class, must be protected. <\/p>\n During the emergence of the State of Lebanon, there were successful attempts in the sixties and seventies of the last century towards achieving justice in education for various groups of Lebanese. Available data show that formal education in Lebanon witnessed an exceptional expansion during the independence era, as the number of students in public schools increased from 276,704 to 732,681 between 1959 and 1971, that is, by 165%, and the education budget reached its peak in 1977 at 22% of the GDP (Farha, 2012<\/a>). However, this expansion never led to the formal sector dominating actual enrollment, as private schools maintained throughout that era to accommodate the majority of students. The highest accurately documented percentage of enrollment in public schools dates back to the year 2003-2004 at 37.9%, according to CRDP statistical bulletins, while Education Above All data indicates 41.3% in the year 1979-1980. Since then, the percentage has declined continuously, reaching 25.6% in 2023-2024 – the lowest level on record – with the exception of a temporary rise to 36.5% in 2020-2021, when many families were forced to transfer their children from private to public schools under the weight of the economic collapse. CRDP, 2024<\/a>). <\/p>\n Thus, the educational system in Lebanon turned into a political cover for a deep class structure<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Perhaps the real danger lies not only in the growth of the private educational sector at the expense of the public, but also in the fact that we have stopped talking much about justice. The last study on the impact of social and economic background on education for the Educational Center was conducted in the early seventies and was conducted by Khalil Abu Rjaili (1975). This study concluded early that the Lebanese educational system practices only formal equality, while transforming class privilege into \u201ctalent,\u201d and social deprivation into \u201cweakness\u201d or \u201cindividual failure.\u201d That is, the school, instead of addressing disparity, reproduces it and gives it moral legitimacy, which is exactly what Mahdi Amel warned against when he saw the educational system as an ideological device that reproduces the class system and gives it an aura of inevitability. In the Taif Agreement (1989), this reality was enshrined, and justice was only mentioned twice, which had nothing to do with education. But when Taif addressed the issue of education, he established the following equation: \u201cProtecting private education… and reforming formal education.\u201d Since then, public school has been treated as a sector that must be managed, while private education must be protected. Here we ask who should protect this sector and why should it be protected, especially given that the majority of these schools are affiliated with sects, their associations, or politicians? <\/p>\n Thus, the educational system in Lebanon turned into a political cover for a deep class structure: those who could pay joined the private sector – with varying levels and costs – and were guaranteed better chances in social mobility, and those who were unable remained in the formal sector, which suffered most in the primary stages. Failure and dropout rates accumulate, and children in their first formative years lose the opportunities that their peers have in private, and it is difficult to compensate for them later. From the beginning, the starting point is not equal, so the social difference between the two families turns into an educational difference, and then into a difference in the future. It is as if education was designed to consolidate what exists, not to change it. <\/p>\n Education is no longer a public right, but rather an expensive existential investment that families undertake alone, to the point where they spend nearly a third of their income on it. While the state itself continues to indirectly fund the private sector through education grants for employees, grants whose value increases as the job rank increases, thus enhancing the reproduction of the social hierarchy itself. The state spends on financing the private sector by granting employees what is currently equivalent to 70% of what it spends on the public education sector (Nama 2023). In contrast, approximately 30% of children today are on the verge of dropping out or out of school completely CAS & UNICEF (2025), while children with disabilities and refugee students are almost completely left out of educational policies and discussions, as if they do not even exist in the state\u2019s conception of education and citizenship. Then came the Israeli aggression and added other challenges to the concept of justice in education <\/p>\n These questions become more serious in light of the intense Israeli targeting of specific regions and social segments, and the accompanying clear attempts to deepen internal division and weaken any sense of common destiny. In such moments, education is no longer just a service sector or an administrative file, but rather becomes a central arena for conflict over the meaning of justice, the form of the state, and the nature of the society that we want to build during and after the war. <\/p>\n Hence, this article begins with an attempt to question the concept of justice in education during war: What does educational justice look like in the context of war? How can educational policies be formulated that do not punish the most affected groups, and do not grant privilege back to those who already have a greater ability to survive and thrive? To understand what educational justice can actually mean in light of this war, theoretical or political discussion alone is not enough. Rather, we must listen to the lived experiences of students, teachers, parents, and school administrators who live this war daily.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/strong> By December 2024, 349 schools had been partially damaged and 33 schools were completely destroyed, while students in the south, the Bekaa, Baalbek, and the southern suburbs experienced repeated interruptions to education, forced displacement, and fragile education via messaging applications. However, the field study conducted by the Center for Lebanese Studies in March 2026 reveals that this war did not cause a sudden educational rupture, but rather came to deepen a cumulative collapse that began since the economic crisis in 2019, through the Corona pandemic, the port explosion, and successive wars. <\/p>\n To understand what educational justice can actually mean in light of this war, theoretical or political discussion alone is not enough. Rather, we must listen to the lived experiences of students, teachers, families, and school administrators who live this war daily. The field study conducted by the Center for Lebanese Studies during the war, which included interviews and discussion groups with 88 participants, including students, parents, teachers, and school principals, in addition to a questionnaire that included 300 teachers in public schools, reveals that what the education sector is experiencing today is not just a \u201ctemporary stumble\u201d that can be overcome by returning to classes or taking official exams, but rather a deep justice crisis that reveals who actually has the right to education and who is gradually being pushed out of it. <\/p>\n At the height of the war, the Ministry of Education relied on distance and hybrid education as a solution for continuity. But the study reveals that this \u201ccontinuation\u201d was not equal. Distance education has effectively become a class privilege linked to owning electricity, the Internet, devices, and a safe space inside the home. 83% of teachers reported that weak or interrupted Internet was one of the most prominent obstacles, while 46% indicated the lack of sufficient devices for students. More than 65% of teachers confirmed that less than half of their students regularly participated in educational lessons. <\/p>\n As for the shelter centers, the idea of \u200b\u200b\u201ce-learning\u201d seemed almost disconnected from the daily reality of students. Families shared one phone, and children lived in crowded rooms that lacked privacy, electricity, and quiet. Some students were studying in the hallways or waiting for their father to return by phone so they could continue lessons. In many cases, the Internet packages announced by the Ministry did not reach students at all, or reached parents’ phones in a way that did not allow their actual use for learning. <\/p>\n The study also reveals that the war not only deepened the differences between the rich and the poor, but also reproduced inequality between regions and social groups. In the south and Nabatieh, more than 90% of schools relied on distance education due to the intensity of targeting, while other regions were able to partially maintain in-person or hybrid education. This means that the war did not affect all students to the same extent, but rather redistributed learning opportunities according to geography, security, and economic ability. Only 5% of teachers considered that current teaching patterns take into account the needs of students with disabilities<\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/strong> As for children with disabilities and learning difficulties, they were among the most marginalized and excluded groups. The study indicates that only 5% of teachers considered that current education patterns take into account the needs of students with disabilities, while most participants acknowledged the almost complete absence of any specialized services, psychological support, or inclusive arrangements within schools or shelter centers. Most of the shelters themselves were not equipped to receive persons with disabilities, leaving many of them completely isolated from education and services. <\/p>\n But perhaps the most dangerous results of the study lie in its revelation that the crisis is no longer just a crisis of access to education, but rather a crisis of the meaning of education itself. Many students, teachers, and families are wondering about the usefulness of curricula and exams that are imposed in the same way on students living in radically contradictory circumstances. Most of the participants saw that the insistence on ending official curricula and exams reflects a \u201cpolicy of normalization with war,\u201d which treats students as if they live in equal conditions, while some of them learn from stable homes and others try to study from inside shelter centers or under bombardment, fear, and displacement. <\/p>\n The study also reveals the enormous exhaustion experienced by teachers themselves. 79% of teachers reported that they do not receive adequate support, while 55% said that they suffer psychologically while teaching, and only approximately 1% received any psychological support. Also, 81% of teachers confirmed their need for direct financial support to continue teaching. In many cases, teachers themselves have been displaced or living in unstable conditions, while being asked to continue teaching and manage students’ psychosocial crises at the same time. <\/p>\n In light of the heated talk about the Ministry of Education\u2019s decision to continue with official exams, another study by the Center for Lebanese Studies shows that the rates of students\u2019 readiness to take official exams have witnessed a sharp and continuous decline since 2023, which reflects the cumulative impact of crises and wars on the educational process. In 2023, the percentage of students who considered themselves ready for official exams reached 48% in the private sector compared to 21% in the official sector. Then these percentages decreased in 2024 to 27% in the private sector and 17% in the formal sector, before declining unprecedentedly in 2026 to reach their lowest levels, as they did not exceed 8% in the private sector and 7% in the formal sector. These numbers reveal not only the extent of the educational collapse, but also how the traditional differences between the two sectors have begun to narrow due to the comprehensive collapse and war, even if its effects remain more severe on students of formal education and the most vulnerable groups. The past years have shown that official exams have lost a large part of their educational meaning due to the way they are administered and their political and administrative use. If some private school students need exam results to enroll in universities abroad, this cannot become the only criterion on which educational policies are built in a country experiencing war and collapse of this magnitude. <\/p>\n In light of the continuation of the Israeli war on Lebanon, defining the meaning and nature of the justice of education in wars becomes more urgent and complex. Justice in wartime cannot mean treating all students in the same way despite their radically different circumstances, and it cannot be reduced to merely \u201ccontinuing education\u201d and holding official exams at all costs. Any serious conversation about educational justice in wartime must begin by acknowledging a basic truth: wars do not produce equal suffering, but rather deepen existing inequalities and distribute pain and loss unequally. Hence, the role of the state and the Ministry of Education cannot be reduced to merely keeping schools open formally or holding official exams as the only evidence of \u201ccontinuity of education\u201d or \u201cresilience.\u201d This approach reduces education to its administrative and technical dimension, and ignores its deeper moral and social function in moments of division and collective pain. <\/p>\n The war revealed dozens of local, individual and institutional initiatives that attempted to protect education as a space for human relations and not merely a process of indoctrination<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Therefore, making solidarity the central value that governs educational policies may be one of the most important things the Ministry of Education can do today. Education, before capitalism and the modern state turned it into a tool for job sorting and individual competition, carried a deeper social and moral meaning: for people to learn how to pick each other up in moments of fall and crisis and flourish together. <\/p>\n Perhaps one of the bright spots amidst this collapse lies in the existence of a rich ground within Lebanese society itself for practices of solidarity and mutual care. The war revealed dozens of local, individual and institutional initiatives that attempted to protect education as a space for human relations and not merely a process of indoctrination. In the study of the Center for Lebanese Studies, experiences emerged of principals who, from the first days of the war, took the initiative to create communication and support networks via WhatsApp applications to follow up on all their students, not only educationally, but also psychologically and socially. Initiatives also emerged for schools that received displaced students and integrated them with non-displaced students, and for teachers who turned virtual classrooms into spaces for support, breathing, and dialogue, not just places to finish lessons. <\/p>\n In this sense, the value of the \u201cpath\u201d becomes more important than the \u201cresult,\u201d and the method of managing the academic year becomes more important than the certificate itself. <\/p>\n Central Administration of Statistics (CAS) and United Nations Children\u2019s Fund (UNICEF). (2025).\u202fSub-National Lebanon Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2023, Statistical Snapshots<\/i>. Beirut, Lebanon: CAS and UNICEF. <\/p>\n Abu Rjaili, Kh. (1974. The effect of social and economic background on academic achievement in Lebanon<\/a>. Educational Center for Research and Development. <\/p>\n Amel, Ps 2017. On issues of education and educational policy<\/a><\/p>\n Center for Lebanese Studies [CLS]. (2024).Education under fire: The impact of the Israeli aggression on education in Lebanon<\/a>. <\/p>\n Educational Center for Research and Development [CRDP]. (2024).Statistical Bulletin 2023\u20132024<\/a>. <\/p>\n National Accord Document [Taif Agreement]. (1989).Lebanese Republic.<\/p>\n Bourdieu, P., & Passeron, J.-C. (1990).Reproduction in education, society and culture(R. Nice, Trans.; 2nd ed.). Sage. (Original work published 1970)<\/p>\n Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976).\u202fSchooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. Basic Books.<\/p>\n Chahine, S., Hammoud, M., & Shuayb, M. (2024).\u202fLearning loss in Lebanese public schools: Evidence from Grade 10 students. Centre for Lebanese Studies.<\/p>\n Farha, M. (2012).\u202fThe historical legacy and political implications of state and sectarian schools in Lebanon<\/a>. Academia.<\/p>\n Lebanon Response Plan. (2026).\u202fEducation sector dashboard\u202f<\/a>[Power BI data visualisation]. <\/p>\nEducational justice in the shadow of war<\/b><\/h2>\n
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\nIn light of the Israeli war, talking about educational justice is no longer a theoretical discussion or a postponed reform demand, but rather a question related to the survival of society itself. The Israeli aggression left widespread destruction in the education sector, with the displacement of about 1.2 million people, the closure of 1,228 public schools (2,780 public and private schools), and the conversion of 642 educational institutions, including 550 public schools, into shelter centers for the displaced. The direct impact also affected about one million male and female students, more than 45,000 male and female teachers, and about 250,000 students in the afternoon shift and educational centers, while only 310 official schools remained operating at the height of the aggression throughout the country, while most private schools were opened in safe areas. <\/p>\n
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\nIf the war has deepened educational inequality in Lebanon in general, its impact on Syrian and Palestinian refugees has been more severe and severe. The refugees entered this war while they were already in a fragile position within the Lebanese educational system, after years of marginalization, repeated interruption of education, weak funding, declining opportunities to enroll in formal education, and the increase in political discourse hostile to them. Before the last war, about 40% of Syrian children were already out of school, while dropout rates were constantly rising as a result of the economic crisis, child labor, difficulty of movement, and the decline in international funding for education programs. With the war, this fragility was exacerbated in an unprecedented way. Many second-shift schools were closed or turned into shelters, while thousands of refugees found themselves displaced again inside Lebanon, or unable to access education due to displacement, poverty, and loss of the Internet and devices. <\/p>\nThe meaning of justice in wars<\/b><\/h2>\n