According to respondents, ‘the average teacher's monthly income is $131, while their monthly commute costs $128, leaving them with $3 to live on for the entire month.”

This situation has caused 66 percent of teachers to work a second job to cover their living expenses and two-thirds to borrow money to cover their basic needs.

Seventy-three percent of teachers said they had trouble paying their bills. This is hardly surprising, given that monthly electricity and internet bills represent 139 percent of their average monthly income.

Even worse, the financial crisis has deprived teachers of access to basic needs, with almost all of them, 99 percent, reporting that the crisis has limited their access to medical services.

The high cost of transportation also forced 60 percent of teachers to miss school days.

As a result, 20 percent of them were disciplined for absenteeism and denied the additional monthly allowance of $90 (normally given to all public school teachers).

This has negatively affected their motivation to work and their psychological well-being, as well as their relationship with their management, the study points out.

This additional allowance, which was supposed to compensate for the salary devaluation, was described as poor by more than three quarters of the teachers (86 percent) surveyed.

This is because only public school teachers were granted this compensation, while a large proportion of contract and casual teachers were denied it.

Similarly, the performance of the private and public education unions was judged unsatisfactory by half of those interviewed, as these organizations did not provide adequate support to teachers.

The failure of the stakeholders to respond appropriately to the crisis has driven many teachers to despair.

As many as 73 percent of teachers are planning to leave the education sector and three quarters are considering leaving Lebanon.

“The drastic decline in the quality of life of teachers is one of the major challenges in education today,” Shuayb said.

“The only way out of the problem is to raise teachers’ salaries once and for all, and not just give them a few subsidies,” she added.

Parents face dollarization of school fees

Another major challenge for the sector is the declining purchasing power of parents, whose income is mainly Lebanese lira.

They simply cannot afford to meet the demand of private schools to pay part of the tuition fees in fresh dollars, in addition to the fees in Lebanese lira, according to the researcher.

Including the average tuition fee per year per child ($1,037) and school transportation ($1,318), parents of students must pay an average of $2,355 per child to attend private school, the study points out.

Despite the red lines imposed by the Education Ministry, seven out of 10 parents reported that their child’s school required that a portion of the tuition be paid in “fresh” dollars, in addition to the increase in Lebanese lira fees.

In the face of this significant increase, the average monthly household income reported by parents is limited to $462, which means that 42 percent of their annual income is spent on a child’s schooling — these figures exclude additional costs such as books and stationery.

With the increase in tuition, half of the parents surveyed reported that they had recently transferred their child from a private school to a public school, with 87 percent indicating that they could no longer afford the tuition fees.

All of these challenges threaten children’s educational futures as 72 percent of parents reported that they may no longer be able to afford their child’s education and 10 percent indicated that their child may have to enter the workforce early.

The consequences for students are devastating. Children in Lebanon, especially Syrians, have missed out on learning over the past three years, which may jeopardize their academic future.

According to one-third of the surveyed parents and teachers, the crisis has reduced children’s academic performance and overall psychological well-being, with 10 percent dropping out and 15 percent repeating grades.

Similarly, the economic crisis has affected schools’ ability to operate.

Three-quarters of teachers reported that their schools were not quite ready to start a new school year due to fuel and staff shortages, which may have a significant impact on the quality of teaching and learning for the fourth year in a row.