OVER 15 years ago I found myself in Coalisland in Northern Ireland. Never before had I run a GCSE training session with Chinook helicopters whirring a few feet overhead. And never had I witnessed young armed soldiers in full combat gear patrolling streets where children, just a few years younger, were walking home from school.

It was good preparation for a visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, as the same scene is played out on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank every day. One thing Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories have in common is a desire to educate their children out of the situation in which they find themselves.

It was a pleasant surprise that this is the case in Gaza as it is a society on the edge of collapse. I mistakenly thought existence under siege conditions would mean day-today survival took over and keeping schools open would be the last thing on the relief agencies’ agenda.

I am glad to say that the reverse is true, as Karen AbuZayed, the Head of UNRWA in Gaza, made clear during the extraordinary day we spent there. Some 200,000 children in Gaza receive education from UNRWA in 214 schools, in addition to schools in Gaza run by Hamas.

The school we visited, Beach Camp, was quiet and orderly, and it was clear that the conditions for a decent education were present. However, most schools run a double shift system with children attending either for the morning or afternoon session, less than ideal conditions for anything other than a rudimentary education. UNRWA’s Schools of Excellence programme has begun to make a difference, with rapid improvements within a year in Arabic, mathematics, English and science.

I was not surprised to learn from the Headteacher of Beach Camp that the conflict has led to a long process of collapse in education standards, resulting in 90 per cent failure rate in mathematics when children were independently tested throughout Gaza in 2006-07. This is hardly surprising given what we witnessed in Beach refugee camp: under-nourished and traumatized children living in crumbling houses, some who told us they were separated from their fathers trapped in the West Bank.

To counter this, UNRWA has introduced an intensive remedial programme in basic skills in Arabic and mathematics, employing 1500 special needs teachers and reducing class sizes from 50 to 30 in grades 7, 8 and 9. Teacher quality is also an issue, so entry levels have been raised and female teachers are now employed for the first time to teach boys as well as girls in higher grade classes – a controversial and courageous move in Gaza, where Hamas has separated boys and girls even at primary level in its own schools.

To cut absenteeism, 110 UNRWA schools have introduced a feeding programme and 145 schools have provided children with stationery – although Israel has recently halted imports of paper to Gaza schools in case this is used for seditious leaflets. Children’s education in the Israeli town of Sderot, 800m from the border with Gaza, has also suffered. Over 7000 Kassam rockets have been fired at the town from Gaza since 1991 and the range, size and frequency of these has increased considerably this year.

Rockets are launched especially at times when children travel to and from school, resulting in bomb shelters in every playground and fortifications very similar to the Israeli border wall enclosing school buildings.

I cannot imagine teaching effectively in oppressive classrooms with very little natural light, especially with many children suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. Unsurprisingly, exam results in Sderot are also below average. The situation we witnessed in the West Bank is different again. Education is provided here by the Palestinian

Authority based in Ramallah and some of the impressive modern schools we came across had been funded by foreign benefactors. The most striking problem for high school students is the difficulty of travelling to school, particularly for those whose school is in a neighbouring village. The incursion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank has led to road closures and blockades for the Palestinians.

On the day we visited the small town of Azzun, we came across four teenage girls clambering over the rubble blocking vehicles from the main road, in order to travel back to their home village.

In their vital last year of schooling, the girls we met had missed many days exam preparation as previously they could not even get through the barrier. But the desire to receive a good education leads them and many others to take great personal risks just to reach school.

While the post-Annapolis talks grind on, Israeli settlers annex more land in the West Bank and Hamas launches more rockets and attacks. Yet the biggest losers are those who are the future of this fractured land – the children whose education is the one thing that could make the difference to the future.