BEIRUT: In a surprise move, the Lebanese Cabinet has canceled the school examinations for the intermediate (brevet) certificate, which were scheduled for July 6.
The decision has confused the Education Ministry, students and schools.
The Interior Ministry’s recent decision was based on “the logistical difficulties the security bodies are facing, which are preventing them from covering all the centers where official exams are held in Lebanon, including the official exams for the intermediate and high school certificates,” an official source said.
According to caretaker Education Minister Abbas Halabi, the only option was to “cancel the official exams for the intermediate certificate this year and carry out the ones for the high school certificate only.”
The official exams for the intermediate certificate are held in Lebanon and mark the end of intermediate school and the beginning of high school.
“Right now in Lebanon, the brevet certificate is the only way that allows us to assess the educational level of students transitioning from intermediate school to high school,” Halabi said.
He added that “there are Lebanese educational bodies and even political parties that consider the brevet certificate as a psychological burden for students and their parents.”
Public school students have had a tumultuous year, with their teachers striking over the soaring cost of fuel and unpaid salaries and resulting in them missing out on important lessons.
Amid the ongoing economic collapse, hundreds of Lebanese students have enrolled in public schools. Educators expect the trend to continue in the next academic year following the dollarization of private school tuition fees.
About 62,300 students were set to take the official exams, about 16,000 of them from private schools.
The number of Syrian students attending afternoon classes in public schools has reached 2,500. About 41,000 students attend private schools.
Halabi said the Cabinet had asked the Education Ministry to prepare “the appropriate mechanism to cancel the intermediate certificate,” but the ministry had yet to take the decision as it required the Cabinet’s approval.
He also criticized the Cabinet’s decision to cancel the certificate so close to their scheduled date, describing it as “a cynical way to deal with an important educational milestone.”
Halabi said that he had faced criticism from other ministers over his desire to continue with the certificate “when other countries have canceled it.”
“We have three solutions: we can either rely on school grades, subject students to a national exam carried out by schools instead of the ministry of education, which would set the questions for two or three subjects only, or give students certificates of completion, which is something we are trying to avoid, as all students, including those who didn’t study, will be promoted to the next grade.”
The minister warned against “manipulating the fate of the intermediate certificate” and added that “the number of supervisors and correctors is secured, the logistical arrangements are in place and the funding is available.”
The brevet certificate has been canceled three times since its resumption at the end of the Lebanese civil war.
In 2014, teachers boycotted the exams, resulting in their cancelation. In 2020, they were canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in 2021 it was deemed they could not be used to accurately assess students’ educational attainment because of the implementation of remote learning during the health crisis.
An educational expert, who asked not to be named, said the Cabinet’s move was “a populist political decision, through which politicians want to please their supporters.”
Such decisions had led the country to the place it was now, the person said.
The official exams for the high school certificate are scheduled for July 10.
Albert Chamoun, adviser to the education minister, told Arab News that “the number of students who will take these exams has reached 38,000, including a fair number of Syrian refugees.”
The number of refugees was higher this year than in the past, he added.
“Syrian students used to stop going to school after they finished ninth grade to join the labor market, but nowadays, there’s a portion of them who pursue their education all the way to the universities,” he said.
In the past, Syrian students have abstained from taking the official exams due to the differences in the Syrian and Lebanese curricula. But those who are sitting the exams this year arrived in Lebanon after the outbreak of the Syrian war and have been in the educational system since elementary class.
UNICEF covers the costs of these students’ education and pays the school fund $140 per child. It also covers the teachers’ fees and operational costs.
Due to the economic collapse, Lebanon has recently started borrowing money to fund its official exams.
While UNICEF has contributed to teachers’ fees for taking part in the tests, a loan from the World Bank will cover all of the other administrative and logistical expenses.
Testing times: Lebanon’s Education Ministry confused by sudden cancelation of key exams
https://arab.news/6536s
Testing times: Lebanon’s Education Ministry confused by sudden cancelation of key exams
- Intermediate certificate tests were set to take place next week
- Examinations mark end of intermediate school, beginning of high school
UN to add nutrients to second round of Gaza polio vaccinations
Discussions are also underway about the feasibility of adding further vaccinations to the campaign, including a measles immunization, said Ted Chaiban, UNICEF’s deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations.
“There are over 44,000 children born in the last year and who haven’t received their basic immunization,” he said on Thursday.
The first round of the polio vaccination campaign, which began on Sept. 1, reached its target of 90 percent of children under 10 years of age, the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said on Monday.
It was carried out in phases over two weeks during humanitarian pauses in the fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas. A second round of the polio vaccinations has to be carried out within four weeks.
The World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed last month that a baby was partially paralyzed by the type 2 polio virus, the first such case in the territory in 25 years.
A high risk of famine persists across Gaza as long as the war continues and humanitarian access is restricted, according to an assessment by a global hunger monitor published in June.
“In the same way that we’ve been able to reach all children with polio vaccines, we need to move and use the same modality to reach children with their basic vaccines, with some of the nutrition and hygiene interventions that are essential to save their lives,” Chaiban told reporters after visiting Gaza, the West Bank and Israel.
“Those are lifesaving interventions and the parties have shown that they can line up when necessary. It needs to happen again,” he said.
Blinken urges against ‘escalatory actions’ in Mideast
- France, US are united in calling for restraint and urging de-escalation when it comes to Middle East in general and when it comes to Lebanon in particular: Blinken
PARIS: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken Thursday urged against “escalatory actions by any party” in the Middle East, following the explosions of devices of Lebanese group Hezbollah blamed on Israel.
“France and the United States are united in calling for restraint and urging de-escalation when it comes to the Middle East in general and when it comes to Lebanon in particular,” Blinken said after talks in Paris with his French counterpart Stephane Sejourne.
Blinken said this was especially important at a time when the international community was continuing work to agree a ceasefire in Gaza to end the conflict between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.
“We continue to work to get a ceasefire for Gaza over the finish line... We believe that remains both possible and necessary. But meanwhile we don’t want to see any escalatory actions by any party that makes that more difficult,” Blinken said.
Sejourne, making one of his final public appearances ahead of a cabinet reshuffle that will see him sent to Brussels as France’s new EU commissioner, said both France and the United States were “very worried about the situation” in the Middle East.
He said both the United States and France were coordinating to “send messages of de-escalation” to the parties.
“Lebanon would not recover from a total war,” he said.
Fears of a major war on Israel’s northern border have increased after thousands of Hezbollah operatives’ communication devices exploded across Lebanon, killing 37 people and wounding nearly 3,000 more across two days.
Israeli planes bomb southern Lebanon after radio blasts
- Attacks on Hezbollah's communications equipment killed 37, wounded around 3,000 in past two days
- Israel says its conflict with Hezbollah, like war in Gaza, is part of a wider regional confrontation with Iran
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM: Israel bombed southern Lebanon on Thursday and said it had thwarted an Iranian-led assassination plot after explosions in booby-trapped radios and pagers in the past two days caused bloody havoc in the ranks of its arch-foe Hezbollah.
The attacks on Hezbollah’s communications equipment killed 37 people and wounded around 3,000, raising fears that a full-blown war was imminent. The action also sowed disarray across Lebanon as panicked residents abandoned their mobile phones.
“This isn’t a small matter, it’s war. Who can even secure their phone now? When I heard about what happened yesterday, I left my phone on my motorcycle and walked away,” said Mustafa Sibal on a street in Beirut.
Israel has neither confirmed nor denied being behind the attacks but multiple security sources have said they were carried out by its spy agency Mossad.
The Lebanese army said on Thursday it was blowing up pagers and suspicious telecom devices in controlled blasts in different areas. It called on citizens to report any suspicious devices.
Lebanese authorities banned walkie-talkies and pagers from being taken on flights from Beirut airport until further notice, the National News Agency reported. Such devices were also banned from being shipped by air.
In Beirut on Thursday, a distant roar in the skies could be heard from what state media said was Israeli warplanes breaking the sound barrier — a noise that has become common in recent months.
Hezbollah fired missiles at Israel on the day after the Oct. 7 cross-border attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas which triggered the Gaza war, and since then constant exchanges of fire have occurred, although neither side has allowed this to escalate into a full-scale war.
Israel said its warplanes struck villages in southern Lebanon overnight, and a security source and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV reported airstrikes near the border began again on Thursday just after midday.
Hand-held radios used by Hezbollah detonated on Wednesday across Lebanon’s south.
The previous day, hundreds of pagers — used by Hezbollah to evade mobile phone surveillance — exploded at once, killing 12 people including two children, and injuring more than 2,300.
Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati called on the United Nations Security Council to take a firm stand to stop what he called Israel’s “aggression” and “technological war” against his country.
Israel says its conflict with Hezbollah, like its war in Gaza against Hamas, is part of a wider regional confrontation with Iran, which sponsors both groups as well as armed movements in Syria, Yemen and Iraq.
Assassination plot
Also on Thursday, Israeli security forces said that an Israeli businessman had been arrested last month after attending at least two meetings in Iran where he discussed assassinating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the defense minister or the head of the Shin Bet spy agency.
Last week, Shin Bet uncovered what it said was a plot by Hezbollah to assassinate former Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon.
Israel has been accused of assassinations including a blast in Tehran that killed the leader of Hamas and another in a Beirut suburb that killed a senior Hezbollah commander within hours of each other in July.
Despite the events of the past few days, a spokesperson for the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon said the situation along the frontier had “not changed much in terms of exchanges of fire between the parties.”
“There was an intensification last week. This week it is more or less the same. There are still exchanges of fire. It is still worrying, still concerning, and the rhetoric is high,” the spokesperson, Andrea Tenenti, said.
Tens of thousands of people have had to flee the Israel-Lebanon border area on both sides since the hostilities began in October.
Shifting focus
The Israeli military said its overnight air strikes hit Hezbollah targets in Chihine, Tayibe, Blida, Meiss El Jabal, Aitaroun and Kfarkela in southern Lebanon, as well as a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in the area of Khiam.
On Wednesday, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the war was moving into a new phase, with more resources and military units being shifted to the northern border.
According to Israeli officials, the forces being deployed there include the 98th Division, an elite formation including commando and paratrooper elements that has been fighting in Gaza.
Hezbollah chief says group suffered ‘major’ blow in device blasts
- Nasrallah struck a defiant tone, warning that Israel would receive “just punishment” for the attacks
- Describing the attacks as a possible “act of war,” he said Israel would face “tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not“
BEIRUT: Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged Thursday his powerful group had suffered an “unprecedented” blow when thousands of operatives’ communication devices exploded in attacks it blamed on Israel.
Israel has not commented on the attacks that killed 37 people and wounded nearly 3,000 across Lebanon over two days but has said it will widen the scope of its war in Gaza to include the Lebanon front.
Delivering a speech after the attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday, which plunged Lebanon into panic, Nasrallah struck a defiant tone, warning that Israel would receive “just punishment” for the attacks.
Describing the attacks as a possible “act of war,” he said Israel would face “tough retribution and just punishment, where it expects it and where it does not.”
“It could be a war crime or a declaration of war,” he said of the attacks, which he branded a “massacre.”
Nasrallah also vowed to keep up Hezbollah’s fight against Israel until a ceasefire in Gaza is reached.
“The Lebanese front will not stop until the aggression on Gaza stops” despite “all this blood spilt,” he said.
Nasrallah addressed Israeli officials’ promises to return thousands of Israelis displaced by exchanges of fire across the border with Lebanon to their homes.
“You will not be able to return the people of the north to the north,” he said, warning that “no military escalation, no killings, no assassinations and no all-out war can return residents to the border.”
Hezbollah is an ally of Palestinian militant group Hamas, which on October 7 launched an unprecedented attack on Israel that sparked Gaza’s deadliest ever war.
Up until now, the focus of Israel’s firepower had been on Gaza.
But Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has seen exchanges of fire between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants almost every day since October.
The violence has killed hundreds of people, mostly fighters, on the Lebanese side, and dozens on the Israeli side.
Israeli warplanes broke the sound barrier over Beirut as Nasrallah spoke, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said, with AFP correspondents in Beirut reporting loud booms.
Nasrallah announced the launch of an internal probe into the attacks, which experts and some Israeli media have said bear all the hallmarks of Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.
EU’s Borrell says Lebanon attacks aimed to ‘spread terror’
- “The indiscriminate method used is unacceptable due to the inevitable and heavy collateral damages among civilians,” Borrell said
- At least 37 people were killed and more than 3,000 wounded
BEIRUT: The EU foreign policy chief condemned attacks which targeted mobile communication devices used by Hezbollah this week, saying whoever was behind them aimed “to spread terror in Lebanon,” a statement from the EU’s Beirut delegation said on Thursday.
“The indiscriminate method used is unacceptable due to the inevitable and heavy collateral damages among civilians, and the broader consequences for the entire population, including fear and terror, and the collapse of hospitals,” Josep Borrell said.
At least 37 people were killed and more than 3,000 wounded when first pagers, then walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah members exploded in two waves of attacks on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Lebanon and Hezbollah say Israel carried out the attack. Israel has not claimed responsibility.
Hezbollah, a heavily armed group backed by Iran, and Israel have been trading fire across the Lebanese-Israeli border for almost a year in a conflict triggered by the Gaza war.
