On Monday, 21 September, Algerian pupils return to school. They are returning at last, after most of the month has passed and after a summer break that, for many of them, effectively began in June. The school year was originally scheduled to start on 6 September, before the authorities postponed the pupils’ return by fifteen days.
At first glance, this may appear to be a simple adjustment to the school calendar. It is not. When a decision affects millions of children and forces families to reorganise their lives, the date is no longer merely an administrative entry that can be moved without explanation or accountability. Fifteen additional days outside school mean a longer interruption to learning, greater pressure on the curriculum after pupils return and additional burdens on parents.
More seriously, the late start to the school year no longer appears to be an isolated exception. Several years ago, pupils generally returned to class during the first week of September. Over recent school years, however, the return date has increasingly fallen in the second half of the month—usually between 19 and 22 September—until postponement has begun to resemble a new rule that the authorities no longer feel obliged to explain.
A break that lasts longer than it should
Holidays are essential for children. After a year of lessons and examinations, pupils need rest, play and time with their families. But rest is one thing; remaining disconnected from every form of organised educational activity for months is another.
A child who spends months away from reading, writing and arithmetic does not necessarily return to school at the same level at which they left. Pupils must recover their habits and knowledge and readjust to waking early, sitting in class, concentrating and completing assignments. Teachers know how much time is lost at the beginning of the school year to revision and to rebuilding skills weakened by the long interruption.
When school starts late, the prescribed lessons do not disappear. The curriculum is still waiting for teachers and pupils, but it must be completed within a shorter period. The likely result is faster teaching, an accumulation of assignments and greater reliance on memorisation in order to finish the programme, rather than giving children enough time to understand, practise and ask questions.
It would be wrong to claim that fifteen days alone explain the problems of Algerian education. The system faces deeper difficulties involving curricula, overcrowded classrooms, equipment and teacher training. Yet the decision reveals a troubling way of thinking: school time is not treated as a precious national resource, but as surplus time that can be removed without explaining how it will be recovered.
Not all school holidays are equal
Children do not all experience the holidays in the same way. Some families can provide books, private lessons, travel, sports clubs, cultural activities and reliable internet access. Other families have neither the money nor the time to provide alternatives, leaving their children to spend long weeks between home, the street and their phones.
Closing schools is therefore not socially neutral. The longer the interruption lasts, the wider the distance becomes between children whose families can purchase educational and recreational opportunities and those who can do little more than wait for the school gates to reopen.
School is more than a place where lessons are delivered. It also provides a daily routine, a relationship with teachers, structured companionship and a setting that protects children’s time from prolonged idleness. In many neighbourhoods that lack libraries, clubs, playgrounds and summer activities, extending the holiday may mean extending the hours some children and adolescents spend in front of screens or on the street, without educational or cultural supervision.
This does not mean that every child outside school is at risk of delinquency, nor that a delayed school opening directly leads to drug use. It does mean that a lengthy period of inactivity increases the state’s responsibility to provide safe and worthwhile spaces, particularly in a society where parents repeatedly express concern about drugs, harmful peer influence and other dangers facing adolescents.
Who looks after the children when both parents work?
Decisions to postpone the start of school sometimes appear to assume that every household has someone available to remain with the children until the administration decides to reopen schools. That assumption is far removed from the reality of thousands of Algerian families.
Fathers work, mothers work and annual leave is limited. Employees cannot simply ask their employers for another fifteen days off because the school calendar has changed. Not every family has a grandparent or relative who can care for the children, and not every household can afford childcare or pay someone to take on that responsibility.
The postponement therefore forces parents into difficult choices: using the remainder of their annual leave, missing work, leaving children with relatives, relying on an older sibling or allowing them to spend long hours in front of a television or phone. In many cases, the greatest burden falls on working women, who are expected to preserve their employment while also taking responsibility for their children’s care.
When the government postpones the start of school, it is not merely changing a date that concerns the Ministry of Education. It is reorganising the lives of millions of families without asking how they will manage those additional days and without providing them with an alternative.
Heat is a real problem, but it is not an education policy
The heat in southern Algeria has been cited among the principal arguments for postponing the start of school. The severity of the climate cannot be denied, nor should children be expected to study in stifling classrooms without adequate ventilation, water or cooling. Protecting pupils’ health is an unquestionable duty.
But the heat in the south did not arrive unexpectedly this year. It has been a known reality for decades. If schools across entire provinces cannot receive pupils at the beginning of September, the question should not be: when will temperatures fall? It should be: why, after all these years, have these schools not been adapted to the climate in which they operate?
Algeria earns substantial revenue from oil and gas and could have established a permanent programme to insulate schools, improve ventilation and cooling, provide water and strengthen school transport. Air conditioning is not simply a matter of purchasing units and attaching them to walls. It requires electricity, maintenance, proper insulation and sustained funding. But the difficulty of the task does not justify leaving it unresolved and then turning the weather into an annual reason to close schools or delay their reopening.
Algeria is also a vast country whose climatic conditions vary greatly between regions. If some southern provinces face exceptional heat, why should the same late date be imposed on coastal, mountainous and temperate regions? Why not adopt regional calendars, morning timetables or special arrangements for the hottest areas, together with a published plan for recovering the days on which teaching cannot take place?
Instead of making schools suitable for the climate of the south, the state appears to wait each year for the weather to cool before opening their doors.
The world does not wait until the end of September
All of this is happening at a time when countries are competing to educate their children in science, mathematics, languages and technology. Artificial intelligence, which is advancing at extraordinary speed, does not make school less important; it makes it more necessary. Pupils today need strong reading skills, solid foundations in mathematics and science, and the ability to think critically and verify information so that they can use new tools rather than become dependent on them.
These abilities are not built through speeches, by adding a new subject to the curriculum or by distributing electronic devices alone. They require qualified teachers, properly equipped schools and sufficient time for learning. While other education systems are searching for the best ways to prepare children for the future, the Algerian authorities behave as though school days can be reduced without consequence.
The problem is not simply fifteen isolated days. It is the message conveyed by the decision: school can be postponed, families can be left to manage on their own, the curriculum can be compressed later, and no clear account need be given of the time lost or how it will be recovered.
Instructional time is a right, not an administrative favour
When announcing the postponement, the authorities should have published the educational and health grounds for the decision, the number of school days affected, the measures planned to recover them and the regions that genuinely required special arrangements because of the climate. They should also have explained what they intend to do to prevent the postponement itself from becoming a story repeated every September.
Algerians are not asking for their children to be sent into unsafe classrooms, nor do they wish to deprive them of rest. They are asking for a state that respects education, plans ahead, equips its schools, considers the lives of working families and holds itself accountable for every hour of teaching that is lost.
Pupils are finally returning to their classrooms. They will carry their schoolbags and notebooks, while teachers once again begin the work of restoring routines, recovering lost knowledge and completing the curriculum. But the question will remain after the school gates close behind them: was the delay an exceptional necessity for which no alternative existed, or has it become further evidence that the authorities are accustomed to placing education at the bottom of the calendar?
A state that postpones school whenever it encounters a difficulty tells its children—even without saying so openly—that their education can wait. Algeria cannot hope to secure a place in an intensely competitive world while postponing its children’s future until the end of September, year after year.