In order to have a look at the status of the infrastructure and commodities within schooling establishments, Dune Voices went on a field visit to “Al Farouk” high school in the Ghat region, located in the southern part of Libya. With approximately one thousand inhabitants, the city contains three schooling establishments for basic education, middle school in addition to “Al Farouk” high school, which accommodates around 367 pupils.

This school underwent many conversions. First, it was established to teach primary and middle cycles before being transformed ten years ago into a high school. In fact, given the overload of pupils in « Omar Al Mokhtar » high school, both establishments swapped their pupils and after that, the name was changed to « The specialized school Al Farouk ». Following that, the specialized schools in Libya were closed down and the establishment became known as “The general high school”.

Mohamed Echmed, a pupil, testifies about the schooling conditions: “Winter is ruthless for us… With the broken school windows, we are suffering from cold in the winter and from heat in the summer. We are even obliged to bring whatever we need from our homes and even carry out restauration and painting works ourselves, in collaboration with the teachers.

Another pupil called Rabiaa Hassan summarizes the situation: “At first, everything was excellent in the school and the courses occurred in a very satisfactory way. But now, teaching is no longer what it used to be… the conditions are so bad that the school no longer has any doors!”

Barka Jibril, an Arabic teacher, told us about the conditions in the school: “The school only covers 10% of the needed equipment including chairs, blackboards, and some books. The rest of the equipment and furniture are almost non-existent. Many promises were made in the past, but none of them were actually fulfilled”.

Jibril further explains that the physics, chemistry, and natural sciences laboratories have been transformed into classrooms due to the lack of teaching space and in an attempt to expand the accommodation capacity given the ever-growing number of pupils. The teacher also states that 367 pupils attend the school and yet only a single one square meter toilet cabinet is at their disposal and there is not even running water. It has been five years without any toilet-related renovation project.

Miled Lahdhiri, an official in education and learning in the city of Ghat states to Dune Voices that the renovation of “Al Farouk” high school, as well as other establishments in this city, used to be carried out by the Department of Administrative Buildings Development in the former Libyan state. Some renovation organisms were tasked to do the job, but for a variety of reasons, they were not able to do it, so it remained a mere project.

In this context, our interlocutor adds that officials from education and learning in the city of Ghat have written to the ministry about this and have sent detailed reports about the state of these schools, which have been classified as needing urgent renovations but that those renovations will eventually depend on the State’s economic stability.

In response to why these relatively small problems have not been solved yet in “Al Farouk” high school and other establishments of Ghat, Lahdhiri answers that although classes have not been interrupted in schools, the situation has worsened due to the absence of financing. “Given the directives of Education and Learning, we included such issues in the list of urgent renovations to be performed as soon as the funds are available. The renovation of windows, among other things, will be possible, knowing that no budget has been allocated to these establishments since 2013.”