Gaza City – Early on Saturday morning, Rana Totah held her two sons’ hands as she walked them to school in al-Katiba, Gaza City, watching them return to a routine they had almost forgotten.

For Totah, 30, the morning was more than the first day of a new school year. It was a return to family life interrupted by nearly three years of war and displacement after Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023.

Displaced from Gaza City’s Zeitoun neighbourhood to al-Katiba in western Gaza City, Totah spent the previous night preparing her children for their first day back in face-to-face education.

She made sure they slept early the night before, then woke them, dressed them and brought them to school.

“Honestly, today was a beautiful day for me. It even felt like Eid,” Totah told Al Jazeera. “I prepared my children, they were excited and they went to bed early. I prepared them as if it were a normal school day.”

The Gaza Municipality school was set up in about 10 tents in the western Gaza City neighbourhood as a temporary space for a return to face-to-face education. “Sometimes there would be months when I stopped taking them altogether,” Totah said.

During the war, including when the family was in Khan Younis, Totah tried to keep her four children in education through informal learning via volunteer-led initiatives. But attendance was irregular, with the dangers of war and the struggle to find necessities a priority for parents, teachers and students. Ultimately, survival came before school, and her children took on essential tasks such as fetching water, despite Totah’s pleas for them to focus on learning.

“There were very difficult days. They would think about things like, ‘Mum, bring me water,’ or ‘Mum, let me go and get you this.’ And I would tell them, ‘ No, I want to focus on your studies.’ Education is the foundation of everything in life.”

A fragile return to learning

The return to face-to-face education comes after nearly three years of disruption due to Israel’s genocidal war, which has seen almost all of Gaza’s population displaced and most buildings in the enclave destroyed.

About 541,000 students returned to education in Gaza when the new school year began on September 19, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education, which comes after a decrease – but not an end – in violence following the October 2025 ceasefire.

In January, the ministry said 317,332 students were attending face-to-face educational spaces, schools and initiatives in Gaza. Another 120,000 were enrolled in virtual schools taught by teachers from the West Bank.

However, despite the Gaza ceasefire, Israeli bombing has continued, with two students killed earlier this month. Such dangers have severely affected the learning environment and education remains severely constrained by war and other realities on the ground.

Nearly 98 percent of school buildings in Gaza had been damaged since October 2023, with more than 93 percent requiring major rehabilitation or full reconstruction, according to UNICEF.

About 700,000 children aged four to 17 had missed formal face-to-face schooling for almost three consecutive school years, with around 420,000 having no face-to-face learning at all.

Inside one tent, Nesma Nahid Abu Asim was teaching mathematics to sixth-grade students, writing on a whiteboard as children sat on mattresses with notebooks on their laps.

Abu Asim has been a maths teacher since 2010. She worked for the Ministry of Education before the war and now teaches through a UNICEF programme supporting education in Gaza.

“During this period, education has been very difficult. There have been major challenges for both parents and teachers as we try to get the student to safety,” she said.

“Education is a right for every student … [but] students arrive without basic stationery or textbooks, while tables and chairs are largely unavailable. The student comes to school today in a dangerous situation, in a war situation.”

Due to Israel’s ongoing siege on Gaza, schools have reported a severe lack of stationery, schoolbooks, desks, and chairs. But for Abu Asim, her biggest concern is the threat of another interruption to education.

“These conditions are difficult for the student, but they are not impossible conditions. The biggest difficulty is that we stop education,” she said.

“We have taken a good step and opened the school year. We are returning to normal life, to education. The student has the right to learn and to sit at a school desk.”

Now she hopes temporary classrooms will eventually give way to safer and more permanent spaces for Gaza City’s children.

“I hope the schools will be emptied of displaced families and returned to these students. These students are our children,” she said. “We cannot put 40 students in a tent. In a classroom, we can have 40 students.”

As his teacher continues her maths lesson, 11-year-old Osama Alayleh briefly paused to tell Al Jazeera how his first day in class feels. “I’m happy that I’m back at school,” he said.

Osama ranked third in his class and hopes to finish the year in first place, and says his favourite subject is Arabic.

He said he would rather be back in a regular school building with tables and chairs, rather than a tent like his home, but is ready for a new school year with notebooks, books and stationery provided by aid groups.

“But what can we do? It’s OK. The important thing is that we study,” he said. “I’m excited for this school year. I hope it continues without any problems.”

A school without desks

Like Osama, many children are still studying in tents and other temporary learning spaces, with cramped conditions and limited resources, UNICEF said.

It is far from a normal school environment and this situation can be seen at Ahbab Shujayea School, a makeshift school housed in worn-out tents near Gaza City’s port area.

School supplies, including basic items such as notebooks and pencils, have been banned from entering Gaza during the war. While some restrictions have been lifted, Palestinian authorities said just this month that Israel had prevented a shipment of school bags and stationery from UNICEF from entering the enclave.

At this school, there are no desks or chairs, so first and second-grade students sit crowded together on the ground, using pieces of cardboard to write on. Their teacher, who also has little to work with, explains the lesson on a very small board.

The school’s director, Inaam al-Batreekhi, said this was the best they could provide the children, given the circumstances.

“More than 300 students are enrolled at Ahbab Shujayea School, but unfortunately, they are students without notebooks or stationery,” al-Batreekhi told Al Jazeera.

“We can study today, we can sit on the ground today. But tomorrow, when the rain comes, we won’t be able to.”

The school serves children from nine displacement camps around the port, from first to sixth grade. Due to security concerns, such as Israeli shelling from the sea, the school day has been shortened, with classes running from 8am to 11am.

“Sometimes students come late and tell me, ‘I was filling water for my mother,’” al-Batreekhi said. “These are displaced children. A short while ago, they were carrying water and food. Now they are here trying to learn.”

She runs the school voluntarily and her ambition is for classes to return to a proper building.

“I hope we can return to official schools, to buildings. All the buildings are gone. All the schools have become tents,” she said. “In previous wars, we would miss school for a month or two, then return and find our school as it was. We would clean it, organise it and go back to studying. Now, returning to schools like that is almost impossible in the blink of an eye.”

For now, al-Batreekhi says the priority is to make this temporary school as comfortable as possible for the children.

“I hope the situation at the school and for the students will improve, and that we can get the support we need to improve their learning conditions,” she said.

“Even having chairs and desks would make a difference. These are children in first and second grade, and they are just beginning their education. They deserve to have the basic conditions to learn.”