The opening of determination schools at some hospitals in Palestine is regarded as a paramount achievement of the Ministry of Education in Palestine. The cooperation with the Ministry of Health to provide a space of hope for Palestinian students at hospitals demonstrates a responsibility to serve hospitalized children and students, asserting their rights to obtain quality health care and quality education regardless of their situation.
I felt happy and grateful when a 12-year-old student was admitted. The child washes their kidneys five days per week while enduring travel from Jenin to Nablus for treatment
Since then, a journey to realize the dreams of dozens of hospitalized children to resume their education began.
Within the framework of the Multi-year Resilience Programme in Palestine funded by the Education Cannot Wait (ECW), UNESCO recognized the importance of the Determination Schools as a unique model and started to shed light on them.
Under each Determination School, children resume their learning while being hospitalized, through curricular and extracurricular activities. The activities demonstrate a concern for hospitalized children, their medical and sensory problems, their age, and their academic level. Educational activities are carried out in a comfortable and supportive and conducive environment, dispelling fear, free of anxiety and feelings of sadness or loneliness.
UNESCO is the only UN agency working in Determination schools within the framework of ECW, ensuring the capacity building of school principals and teachers to enhance their professional capacities, behavioral skills, and competencies. A recent workshop aiming at identifying the needs of school principals, teachers and students took place at the Caesar Hotel in Ramallah on 24 August 2020.
During the workshop, UNESCO showed the success stories achieved with Determination Schools in the past, some of which were heartfelt and moving stories, which increased the teachers' confidence in their work, their perseverance, and their continuous development. Success is born with an undying hope and a passion, demonstrated by teachers as well as students. This hope was materialized with Determination Schools.
The spark that launched the program for the determination schools in Palestine came in 2015, when seven-year-old Muhannad, who arrived from Gaza to Nablus to complete his treatment for leukemia, conveyed his wish to the Ministry of Education to resume his studies
I want to complete my studies before I die!
The workshop concluded with several recommendations including a) providing more space (extra rooms) for the schools, b) putting in place measures for the health and safety of the school, c) building staff capacity to accommodate the needs of sick students, d) starting more recreational activities and educational games, and finally, e) providing equipment.
The next step is to communicate the recommendations to the Ministry of Education and to start preparing a teacher's guide to mainstream cognitive, emotional, social, and behavioral skills for each target age group to initiate the capacity building process. UNESCO believes the Determination School model could be further scaled up in more hospitals in Palestine and replicated in other countries to ensure the right to education for each child is protected so that no one is left behind.