Yemeni kids learn without classrooms, textbooks

CRAMMED under a tattered tent on rough wooden benches, Yemeni children are learning Arabic grammar - lucky to receive an education at all in a country hammered by years of war.

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The children, some without shoes or textbooks, were born into a divided state where fighting has destroyed nearly 3 000 schools. Those that remain are plagued by power cuts and a lack of running water.

Al-Ribat al-Gharbi school near Aden, in Yemen's government-controlled south, is a typical case, with lengthy power outages, no water supplies and a lack of trained teachers.

Next to the crowded tent, teacher Suad Saleh is doing her best with another large group of kids in a cheap temporary building.

“Each class has more than 105 or 110 students,’ she said, wearing the black nigab, or face-covering, that is customary for Yemeni women.

“With this overcrowding, most of them can neither read nor write,” she said.

Her rudimentary classroom is so packed that many children are sitting on the tiled floor, exercise books on their laps.

“It takes me 10 minutes just to quiet them down,’ she said.