Education in East Jerusalem - 2024 Report

For years, Ir Amim has been reporting on the ‘disappeared’ or ‘missing’ students of East Jerusalem—school-aged children whose educational frameworks are unknown to the municipality. This year, in lead up to the publication of our annual report on education in East Jerusalem, we were informed that the Jerusalem Municipality has finally started to collect information on these students.
For the first time, the municipality provided us with information on the education of tens of thousands of children. While we commend the authority’s recognition of its responsibility to know and ensure that every child is enrolled in an educational system (even if not in official institutions), and we applaud their actions to rectify the situation, there are still around 20,000 children whose educational whereabouts are unsure or unknown—meaning no one is looking after their well-being and educational rights.
Moreover, even if we knew the whereabouts of all students, there would not be enough classrooms for them to learn in, given that East Jerusalem is missing 2,447 classrooms to adequately accommodate all school-aged children. This continues to be the case despite a Supreme Court ruling mandating the construction of these classrooms over a year and a half ago.
The 2023-2024 academic year was experienced under the shadow of unprecedented conflict, which has also had severe effects on the emotional and physical well-being of Palestinian students in the city and which the authorities have not handled adequately.