The Ministry of Education has announced the dates for the high school end-of-year exams as students in many areas of the country continue to have difficulties to access their schools because of the unrest.

Only half of Syria’s high school graduates found their way to the country’s higher education system this year, according to the Ministry of Higher Education.

5.6 million Syrian children entered school on September 18, the first day of the academic year, according to the Ministry of Education.

Syria’s school year will begin on September 18, following a decision by the Ministry of Education that will affect more than 5.5 million pupils.

Syria’s Baath Party, which has been ruling Syria single-handedly for almost five decades, is establishing a private university, a move that will help it find new sources of finance but that also fully contradicts its proclaimed socialist principles.

Six new university faculties were established by Presidential decree last week, all of them located in some of the least developed areas of the country.

The Syrian President issued last week a decree establishing two new faculties of science to be located in the southern Governorates of Daraa and Quneitra.

The Syrian Government has confirmed that the dates for the end-of-year exams at school and university levels remained unchanged.

5.51 million Syrian children entered schools and kindergartens at the beginning of the academic year on September 19.

Al-Furat University, the state-owned academic institution located in Syria’s eastern region, has added a new Agriculture Faculty.

A new private university, the country’s sixteenth, has opened in Syria.

Rawafed, or Tributaries, a new USD 10 million school is to open its doors in Homs next September at the beginning of the 2010-2011 academic year.

Several small and medium-sized Syrian cities will witness the opening of university faculties next year.

Syria and Iran have laid the foundation stone of a joint university to be built in Lattakia.

The rector of Syrian International Private University for Science and Technology (SIUST) has been jailed following his dismissal by the Minister of Higher Education.