From Dropout to Top of the Class

Maha is 18, a Syrian refugee from Raqqa. She recently received her Tawjihi results. The Tawjihi is Jorda’s national examination that determines admission to university. Maha scored 19.6 per cent - the second-highest score in Azraq refugee camp and the highest in her school. To understand what that achievement required, you have to start much earlier.  

War forced Maha’s family to flee Syria for Jordan’s Azraq camp, where she completed the first three grades of school. When her family moved out of the camp, Maha dropped out of school at the age of 9. For six years, she watched the school bus fill with students from her balcony, her hope fading a little more each year. Yet she never let go of it entirely. A friend studied with her and kept her passion alive. Together they turned learning English into a daily game, saying aloud every English word either of them knew.  

At 15 and upon returning to the camp, Maha found Makani, a UNICEF child-friendly centre that provides different services including learning support. Its facilitators believed in her. Life skills sessions reignited her passion for education, while computer classes took her from never having used a computer to using one to catch up with peers six years ahead of her. The facilitators also referred Maha to UNICEF-supported catch-up classes at a camp school, which she attended for two years.  

At 17, finally walked back into formal education as a Grade 10 student. In her first monthly examinations at the UNICEF-supported, Ministry of Education school, she failed every subject, except for geography. Undeterred, she followed free lessons by teachers on YouTube, and rebuilt what she had missed, day by day. A year later, she finished fourth in class. 

Then came Tawjihi. Around her, life pressed in from every side: her father was in Syria and unable to find work; her mother was the family's sole earner, working as an incentive-based volunteer in the camp hospital to support six children; and as the eldest, Maha carried responsibility for her younger siblings alongside her studies. 

The camp's internet connection was too weak during the day, so Maha slept during the day and studied from sunset until morning – sometimes for up to 13 hours- before going to school, completing her household duties, and returning to her books. She kept one rule: never enter an exam without understanding every question in the book. 

When the results came, her school principal called her and was the first person to deliver the news: "Maha, I am so proud of you. You came first!” Maha laughed: "Are you joking? I didn't even dare to dream that this could ever happen to me!" 

Today, her little brother, who is in Grade 2, wants to be "highly educated like Maha." Her five-year-old sister hid Maha's old books in another room: "You have finished! Come and watch TV with us. I missed you." 

Her mother worked so that her children could study. "We are still here in Jordan," she says. "The world has begun to forget that. There are fewer scholarships every year. The UN has helped save my child's future. I just hope it does not stop now, because there are younger ones coming behind her." 

Maha's own message to other young people is simple: find a place that supports you, study what you love, and do not give up. "If people discourage you, work hard and show them you can succeed. Let them be your motivation," she says. "You have everything you need to be exceptional." Maha now dreams of specialising in English at university. 

UNICEF is grateful for the European Union, the United Kingdom through the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Kingdom of the Netherlands through the PROSPECTS partnership and the Embassy of Switzerland in Jordan for supporting children’s right to learn in Jordan’s Syrian refugee camps.