SAFA - The collapse of early childhood education in Gaza is threatening to leave tens of thousands of children without the basic skills needed for learning, education officials and specialists have warned, raising fears of long-term educational and cognitive gaps.

Before the Israeli genocidal war, Gaza had 619 kindergartens serving 65,969 children during the 2022/2023 academic year, according to data from the Ministry of Education’s General Directorate of Planning and Institutional Performance.

Of those children, 38,632 were enrolled in the preparatory stage and 27,337 in the kindergarten stage.

The Israeli genocidal war has since brought early childhood education almost entirely to a halt, disrupting school-readiness programs and removing a critical stage of children’s educational development.

Children enter school without basic skills

Education specialists warn that large numbers of children are now entering the first years of formal schooling without having experienced a normal and gradual transition into education.

The problem goes beyond missed lessons that could potentially be recovered through intensive catch-up programs. Many children lack basic developmental and pre-literacy skills, including holding and controlling a pencil, hand movement, copying, visual and auditory discrimination, phonological awareness, and connecting letters and sounds to form simple words and sentences.

Teachers are therefore facing the difficult task of rebuilding these foundational skills while also trying to cover the regular curriculum within limited learning time and emergency conditions.

Learning gaps could become permanent

The impact is also extending to children who had already acquired some basic skills before the disruption.

Children who have not had stable classroom environments to reinforce their knowledge of letters, symbols, and early reading may gradually lose these skills, making it harder to understand sentences and express themselves in writing.

Early numeracy skills are also being affected, including counting, recognizing numbers, and performing simple mental calculations.

Education specialists warn that what may initially appear to be temporary learning loss could develop into structural educational weaknesses that follow children throughout their school years.

Poor foundations in early childhood can later appear as persistent difficulties with reading and writing, slow comprehension, problems in mathematics, and declining confidence and motivation to learn.

Gaza's education system faces wider collapse

The crisis in early childhood education comes as Gaza’s wider education system faces unprecedented destruction caused by the Israeli genocide.

UN and rights reports have indicated that more than 90% of school and university buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, depriving around 800,000 students across the territory of regular education.

Many of the remaining educational facilities have also been converted into overcrowded shelters for displaced families.

The education workforce has suffered major losses as well. Official figures indicate that thousands of students have been among those killed, alongside more than 800 teachers and education workers, as well as dozens of academics, researchers, and scholars.

The loss of experienced education professionals has further weakened Gaza’s capacity to provide learning and support to children living through severe disruption and psychological trauma.

Early childhood recovery needs urgent action

Education officials and academics say restoring early childhood education must become a central priority in Gaza’s educational recovery plans rather than being treated as a temporary remedial program.

They are calling for urgent international and community support to establish temporary learning spaces, provide early childhood development materials, and retrain teachers to address both learning loss and the effects of trauma.

Without urgent action, specialists warn, an entire generation of children could enter their school years without the educational foundations needed to learn, progress, and recover from the consequences of the Israeli genocidal war.