ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria (Rojava) announced on Sunday that it has reached an agreement with the interim government in Damascus to facilitate official education certification for students in areas under its control.
In a statement, the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) said the agreement was made “to ensure the smooth running of the examination process, in the best interests of students and their educational future.”
The agreement includes a one-week postponement of preparatory school exams. It also involves the formation of joint committees to oversee the administration of exams in Rojava, the establishment of temporary joint registration centers, and the approval of registration transfers for students originally from outside the region.
Furthermore, six official exam centers will be designated across five regions, specifically in Hasakah, Qamishli, Raqqa, Deir ez-Zor, and the town of Kobane (Sarrin).
Since 2011, Kurdish authorities in Rojava have developed their own curriculum in areas they control, rejecting the national one in place at the time, which they said promoted Baathist ideology. They also introduced Kurdish as a language of instruction for the first time.
Some 70,000 students studying in the Kurdish-administered areas have been awaiting examination periods, the Rojava-affiliated Hawar News Agency (ANHA) reported on Tuesday.
DAANES explained on Sunday that the agreement with Damascus followed meetings with the Syrian education ministry on Thursday and Friday, emphasizing that the coordination “stems from our shared responsibility to support education and protect the rights of students across Syria, based on cooperation and integration between educational institutions.”
Following a swift offensive, a coalition of opposition groups led by the now-dissolved Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), then-headed by Ahmed al-Sharaa, in early December ousted the regime of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
In late January, Sharaa was appointed Syria’s interim President and on March 10 he signed a landmark agreement with Mazloum Abdi, the chief of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), to “integrate all civil and military institutions in northeast Syria [Rojava] under the administration of the Syrian state.”
The agreement further recognized the Kurdish community as “indigenous to the Syrian state, which ensures this community’s right to citizenship and all of its constitutional rights.”
Of note, the United States-backed SDF serves as the de facto army of Rojava.
Last week, a delegation from Rojava met with the committee appointed by Syria’s new leadership to finalize the implementation of the Abdi-Sharaa agreement.
DAANES then remarked that the meeting was held in “a positive and constructive atmosphere,” noting that discussions included “addressing outstanding issues relating to [student] exams and exam centers [in Rojava], in a way that ensures students’ rights and the integrity of the educational process.”
Prior to that, Syrian Education Minister Mohammed Turko - the only Kurd in the new cabinet - told Rudaw in April that efforts were underway to reconcile the education systems in Damascus and Rojava. He highlighted ongoing work to ensure certification equivalence and to allow students to sit for official exams in their home provinces, rather than traveling long distances to government-controlled areas, as was previously required.
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