Fears of drop in school attendance due to insecurity

As the school day comes to an end in the southern city of Basra, parents hurry to collect their children, especially if they are girls, from school gates for fear of them being kidnapped or attacked. A recent spate of threats against schools has led a number of parents in Basra to keep their children at home. Meanwhile, the police, albeit short of equipment and supplies, are trying to do what they can to restore security. Girls' schools in side streets have been blocked off by big stones to keep cars away, and everyone wishing to enter the school - except pupils and school staff members - has their identity checked before being allowed in. Some parents, mainly those who do not own cars, hire buses to transport their children home. But others are less fortunate. A pregnant woman taking her nine-year-old daughter home from school said she had to walk to and from the school twice a day because she could not afford a taxi. Recent incidents are worrying parents. In Basra's Al-Abbasiyah area, a mine was discovered at a boys'primary school a week ago. The school was vacated for few days while the matter was dealt with, but now the boys are back. Also last week, at least two schools received flyers containing bomb threats with the result that many pupils were sent home. "We still live in instability. It's true that there is an increased police presence at schools in Basra with the start of this new term to protect them, but three policemen in every school is not really enough," the headmistress of Al-Amjad girls' primary school in the central area of Burayhah, told IRIN. She noted that it had only been a month since the police had started carrying guns instead of batons. "They are not well equipped to protect all these girls. We have 530 students here," she said. Schools in central Basra have become even more concerned about the security situation after a number of mines laid in busy streets and a main bridge were reported. "We are close to a police point, and governorate buildings, which could be always targets," a teacher at Al-Amjad school, said, adding that many rich people lived in the area and that it was their daughters whom the kidnappers were targeting. The teacher said a local woman had had her daughter kidnapped by a gang and only got her back after paying 20 million dinars (US $10,000). Nawf Abd al-Sattar, aged 14, said at her school they had been hearing explosions from time to time, so her parents had decided to keep her at home. "I cannot go out to entertaining places like before, even the market. I can't go to buy anything for myself, and if I go to visit a friend of mine, I have to be accompanied by someone from the family, and they have to bring me back home," she said resignedly. Thousands of Iraqi students went back to school in October. Already disadvantaged as they are by the fact that academic standards and the general state of Iraqi educational institutions have steadily declined since 1991 due to the impact of economic sanctions and the lack of educational links with the outside world, students and teachers agree that the greatest challenge they face right now is insecurity. "Updating the textbooks from the Ba'thist ideology of the former leader is important, but right now, we can avoid teaching that. What is important for us as teachers is to convince our kids that things will be all right," Ibtihal Akram, an Arabic teacher, told IRIN. "It's now all left down to teachers to ensure that the girls are looked after carefully so that they continue coming to schools. We don't want them to feel that the situation is that bad, we keep telling them that it will be better every day so that they keep attending," he said.