Even as war has destroyed hundreds of schools and displaced hundreds of thousands of families, Palestinian authorities have managed to keep about half of Gaza's students learning through an online education system.

Palestinian Minister of Social Development and Minister of State for Relief Affairs Dr. Samah Hamad said around 300,000 of Gaza's 600,000 school-age children are now enrolled in e-learning programs managed by the Palestinian Ministry of Education.

"Palestinians care about mostly two things. First, education," Hamad said in a one-on-one interview with the Manila Bulletin.

"Whenever I go and talk with the people in Gaza, as well as the people in the West Bank, they usually ask me for education for their children. They want to secure this. This is like the most important thing," she added.

Hamad said Palestinian authorities activated online education immediately after the war began, building on teachers' experience with remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Since the start of the war, and you know, it came in 2023, which is immediately after Corona and Covid, so we activated the e-education immediately," she said.

She said the online learning platform was developed with the help of the Kingdom of Jordan and allows teachers from both Gaza and the West Bank to conduct virtual classes for students across the territory.

"It's a credible system that allows for teachers from the West Bank to provide the teaching for the students in Gaza, in addition to teachers in Gaza," Hamad said.

Most students now attend classes using their own mobile phones or their parents' devices because tablet computers secured through UNICEF have been unable to enter Gaza, while universities have resumed online classes through professors based in Gaza, Egypt, and other countries, she said.

Hamad said Palestinian authorities have also continued administering the Tawjihi, the national high school exit examination, online despite the conflict.

According to the minister, the examinations have been conducted online three times since the war began, with about 104,000 students taking the tests inside Gaza and another 3,000 sitting for the exams through Palestinian embassies in 36 countries.

She added that enrollment in the Tawjihi examinations in Gaza reached 100 percent, while universities in the West Bank also opened online enrollment to students from Gaza to allow them to continue their studies.

"We were able to conduct it online three times now... So it's considered a successful achievement for us as Palestinians," Hamad said.

Despite those gains, Hamad acknowledged that students continue to face significant learning challenges after hundreds of schools were destroyed or converted into shelters for displaced families.

"But as I told you, because it was just recent after Covid, so you know all the work depended on e-education. So it was a good experience for our teachers, and we are used to it," she said.