YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 19, ARMENPRESS. The right to education of 25,000 students in Armenia’s Gegharkunik, Vayots Dzor and Syunik provinces has been violated as a result of the latest attack of Azerbaijan on Armenia’s sovereign territory.

Deputy Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Zhanna Andreasyan told a press conference in Armenpress that there was such a security situation in some settlements of the aforementioned provinces that children were deprived of the right to education, the opportunity to ensure the continuation of their studies. The talk concerns both schools and pre-schools.

“In these three provinces, more than 6000 children attending a pre-school were deprived of the opportunity to ensure the continuation of education. The educational facilities in these settlements have not operated last week as holidays were declared. But the missed classes will be made up later. Being in touch with our colleagues in provinces, I would like to state that we have a decision and the schools will start operating starting today”, she said.

The study process in schools where there is no problem with ensuring security will start offline, whereas in others it will be held online.

In Gegharkunik province, the online learning will resume in 12 schools, which are mainly located in Vardenis region, in Vayots Dzor province, it will start in 3 schools and in Syunik province – 112 schools. The offline learning here will resume only in 5 schools. The deputy minister said that decisions will be made every day based on the developments.

“Schools have accumulated a great experience in online learning, unfortunately, not only during the pandemic. From the very first days of the war in autumn 2020 we switched the study process in border communities to a remote learning and provided the necessary equipment. We think that the capacities of schools to organize remote learning are sufficient enough”, she said.

Two educational facilities in Gegharkunik provinces were hit by the Azerbaijani shelling. The deputy minister said that the renovation works will be organized very quickly. She expressed her concerns over the targeting of educational institutions, calling it a violation of international law.

On September 13, the Azerbaijani Armed Forces launched a major attack on Armenia from several directions, bombarding both military and civilian infrastructures with rocket-artillery and drone strikes.

Azerbaijan halted its attack in the evening of September 14 after a ceasefire was reached following the involvement of the international community.