Despite progress in talks between Suwayda education officials and Damascus to secure recognition of upcoming baccalaureate exams, students are wary of a repeat of last year, when thousands were left with unrecognized certificates amid an ongoing rift with the government. The post Suwayda’s students
Despite progress in talks between Suwayda education officials and Damascus to secure recognition of upcoming baccalaureate exams, students are wary of a repeat of last year, when thousands were left with unrecognized certificates amid an ongoing rift with the government.
30 April 2026
PARIS/DAMASCUS — For months, a standoff between the Syrian government and de facto authorities in Suwayda province over the recognition of national exams has left thousands of high school students in limbo. Despite signs of progress this week, many remain concerned about their future.
The dispute centers on the nationwide baccalaureate exams: the final stage of secondary education in Syria. Students who pass receive a secondary education certificate, and their scores determine which universities and majors they can pursue.
Last July, the high-stakes exams were disrupted in Suwayda when what began with tit-for-tat kidnappings between Druze and Bedouin residents exploded into multiple waves of bloodshed after government security forces deployed to the southern province.
The violence—which included identity-based killings committed by government forces, tribal fighters and local Druze factions—left more than 1,700 people dead and 200,000 displaced. Most of those killed were Druze, alongside scores of local Bedouins.
In its wake, and in a state of near-total rupture between Suwayda and the central government, provincial education authorities held the 2025 exams months later without coordination or oversight from the Ministry of Education. In response, the ministry refused to recognize the certificates issued to thousands of students.
Dozens of those students and their relatives demonstrated last week in Suwayda city’s downtown al-Karama Square, calling on the international community to pressure Damascus for recognition.
To prevent a repeat of the same problem in this year’s national exams, scheduled to begin in early June, a committee from the Suwayda Education Directorate met with Ministry of Education officials in Damascus on April 21 to discuss a path forward.
The ministry stipulated that exams be held under its direct supervision, with its representatives given full oversight of the testing process in Suwayda. The provincial education directorate reportedly agreed, but not everything was settled.
On April 29, the Suwayda Education Directorate affirmed its “complete readiness” to administer the process “in accordance with approved ministerial directives and regulations,” allowing 13,500 registered students to sit for this year’s exams.
But there is an outstanding point of contention: The Ministry of Education stipulated that it send a delegation to Suwayda to oversee the exam process, escorted by Damascus’s Internal Security Forces (General Security), according to local media reports. “Negotiations continue to reach a solution on this point,” Suwayda Press reported on Wednesday.
Responding to the reported condition, a social media user with apparent ties to Suwayda’s National Guard—an umbrella of local factions—posted that “any government delegation that enters…will be eliminated inside the test center.”
For his part, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri—the Druze spiritual leader who is the dominant figure in the southern province—released a video last week stating that the 2025 certificates would be internationally recognized. He stressed that this year’s exams would be held in Suwayda, without commenting on the ministry’s stipulation that its representatives be allowed to supervise the exams.
This is not the first time that education has become a point of contention amid the rift between Damascus and Suwayda’s de facto authorities.
A decision by the Ministry of Education on April 1 to replace Suwayda Education Director Layla Jahjah—who held last year’s exams without approval—was forcibly overturned when armed men stormed the directorate building a few days later. Jahjah’s replacement, Safwan Ballan, was forced to resign.
A few days earlier, factions from Suwayda’s National Guard also prevented dozens of university students from traveling through a checkpoint to Damascus to attend classes, reportedly in response to “arbitrary arrests” at another checkpoint controlled by the Syrian government.
As this year’s exams approach, thousands of high school students in Suwayda fear a repeat of last year, driving some to leave the southern province and complete their education in Damascus and Reef Dimashq.
Commenting on the situation, Qutaiba Azzam, the director of media relations at the Damascus-affiliated Suwayda Governorate, said “an armed militia [the Suwayda National Guard] controls the decision of [local] government institutions, and prevents them from communicating and cooperating with the Syrian government, with no thought for the fate of thousands of students.”
Azzam confirmed the reports of “preliminary approval for a ministry delegation to enter Suwayda to oversee the exams.”
Tareq Amer (a pseudonym), left Suwayda weeks ago, heading for the Reef Dimashq city of Jaramana. There, he plans to sit for the national exams and obtain a recognized secondary education certificate. A number of his friends have since followed suit, he told Syria Direct.
Amer was preparing to take his baccalaureate exams last July, before violence broke out in Suwayda. Instead, he sat for the exceptional exams organized by the Suwayda Directorate of Education months later in November. He passed, and received an unrecognized certificate, alongside around 6,000 other students.
“We hoped last year’s results would be recognized so our future wouldn’t be lost,” Amer said. Many “cannot move to Damascus and take exams there because of poor financial conditions or security concerns,” he added. Like other students Syria Direct spoke to, Amer asked not to be identified.
There are no precise figures on the number of students like Amer who have left Suwayda to take their baccalaureate exams in Jaramana and Sahnaya, areas of the Damascus countryside with large Druze populations.
“I expect the number is more than 200,” Amer estimated. “We left despite the threats and smear campaigns accusing us and our families of being traitors, because we no longer have another choice. We don’t want to lose our futures for anybody.”
Amer told no one but his immediate family that he was leaving for Damascus. Passing through the Suwayda National Guard’s checkpoints, he did not disclose why he was traveling, for fear he would be stopped. “If I told them the reason, they wouldn’t let me leave, which would cost me my future,” he said. “They want to use us as leverage.”
Noura Zeineddin (a pseudonym) also took the exceptional exams organized by the Suwayda Education Directorate last year, and passed with a high score. After her secondary education certificate was not recognized, she looked for alternative options to continue her education, including remote learning at universities abroad that do not require an official certificate.
“I thought about repeating the exam this year, but was afraid the same thing would happen again, that the ministry wouldn’t recognize the results,” Zeineddin told Syria Direct on condition of anonymity for security reasons. “I decided to wait until the ministry recognizes the [2025] certificates or agrees to hold official exams this year.”
“What happened to us is bad, and we have lost hope. Many students are having a hard time, psychologically, because of the fear of not having their effort and certificates recognized,” Zeineddin said. She hopes “no new cohort of students will have to bear the burden of things they have nothing to do with.”
“The solution is not to repeat the exams for a certificate, but for the ministry to recognize our certificates and help us so we don’t spend more time away from our studies,” she added.
While Zeineddin rejected the idea of retaking the exams, Wissam Samer (a pseudonym) is preparing to take them for a second time in Suwayda, hoping the dispute between the directorate and the ministry will be resolved and they will be recognized.
“We are being used as leverage by all sides,” Samer told Syria Direct. “The ministry not supervising the exam is a pretext not to recognize [the certificates],” he said, so the solution is to “allow ministry committees to enter, and accept their [exam] questions.”
Muhannad Omran (a pseudonym), also plans to take this year’s exams in Suwayda, despite fearing a repeat of last year. He hoped for an agreement between the ministry and directorate—which appears to have been achieved—to “send delegations to supervise the testing process and recognize the exams,” he told Syria Direct.
Omran could not leave Suwayda like Amer, “because this option is not appropriate for all students,” he explained.
“Missing a year of studies is a bad scenario, but what is worse is the ministry not recognizing the certificate,” he added. “Every student hopes some formula or settlement will be reached for the certificate to be recognized.”
In Omran’s view, the Ministry of Education is “the only body that can be trusted, because it knows how important this stage is for students and their families,” he said. “It is the one that can separate the issue of students and their futures from political back-and-forth and any kind of conflict.”
“No harm has come to the students who went to Damascus, so why does [the National Guard] prevent us from going to take our exams there, and not allow ministry observers to supervise the exams,” he said, before this week’s reported agreement.
“Some say that allowing a ministry delegation to enter amounts to a recognition of the legitimacy of the current government by the people of Suwayda, so they won’t allow it in,” Omran added. This means “we have become a tool to pressure the government—a card to be played for political gains.”
Over the past months, the relationship between the Ministry of Education in Damascus and its directorate in Suwayda deteriorated. This reached the point of the directorate independently conducting last year’s high school exams without the ministry’s supervision or consent, alongside other issues related to the payment of salaries.
From Damascus’s perspective, “the Syrian Ministry of Education has extended numerous facilities and exceptions to Suwayda,” governorate media director Azzam said. “In return, there was no response from the education directorate, due to the individuals close to al-Hijri controlling its decisions.”
Last year, “the condition of allowing a ministry delegation to enter Suwayda and oversee the exam process was rejected by the directorate and the so-called Legal Committee,” he added.
The state “has recognized exams for all academic levels, except for preparatory and secondary high school certificates,” Azzam added, warning that if the Suwayda directorate proceeds with holding exams as it did last year, “the ministry will not recognize them, because conducting the exam process without supervision and coordination with the ministry is illegal.”
But as one physics teacher in Suwayda sees it, “the essence of the crisis is that the [Damascus] authority does not fulfill the most basic definition of a state. After the [July] massacres, services to the province were cut off. It no longer meets citizens’ needs, and fights teachers through their salaries and students through their education.”
“The state is concerned with resolving the impasse with the province. As the authority, it must fulfill its role—recognizing the massacres, apologizing for them and committing to holding all those involved accountable, especially from within itself,” the teacher added.
Another teacher, who works at a school in the eastern Suwayda countryside, laid the blame with Jahjah, the former education director. “We see nothing positive in her administration, she is constantly making promises,” the teacher said. “She failed to secure official recognition of secondary education certificates, and failed to ensure that teachers receive what they are owed.”
The same teacher urged Damascus to “recognize the baccalaureate exams in Suwayda, so as not to waste the future of a whole cohort with no guilt or involvement in political matters.” She added that the repercussions of the crisis not only impact students, but also teaching staff, as “the education sector is the largest, in terms of the number of employees, in Suwayda.”
This report was originally published in Arabic, and was updated and translated into English by Mateo Nelson.
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