Learning loss has emerged as one of the gravest challenges confronting education, as classrooms struggle under sustained pressure from a genocidal war and a tightening financial blockade that has reshaped daily life. The cumulative impact is visible across the education system, where disruption has become routine and stability increasingly elusive, leaving students and teachers to navigate an academic year marked by uncertainty.

Speaking at a regional forum on educational quality and progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 4, Education Minister Amjad Barham outlined efforts to keep learning alive despite the conditions imposed on schools and universities. He said work continues to meet international commitments on inclusive and equitable education, even as institutions in Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem endure repeated targeting. Barham noted that the promise of equal access to education rings hollow when schools are damaged, resources withheld and international educational bodies undermined, yet insisted that development plans remain in motion.

In Gaza, the challenge is framed as a race against time to protect an entire generation’s future. The ministry, Barham said, is attempting to salvage learning pathways and uphold the right to education amid destruction that has paralysed classrooms and severed students from their studies. Similar pressures are felt in higher education, where continuity depends on fragile support systems stretched to their limits by the genocidal war.

The regional discussion also turned to the wider Arab context, with calls for stronger coordination and more reliable data to guide education policy. Improving the quality of information, participants argued, is essential for informed decision-making, particularly at a moment when education systems are being tested by crises that threaten to erase years of progress.