The media office of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education announced in a statement, “The academic year began on September 15 in most Lebanese regions, while the exceptional circumstances resulting from the continued use of a number of public schools as centers to shelter displaced families prevented the start of in-person education in some regions on the same date.” The Ministry confirmed that it had placed, from the beginning, the gradual return to in-person education at the core of its plan for the academic year, noting that “based on this balance between the right to education and the duty to shelter, a plan was worked on to group shelter centers, allowing for the improvement of shelter conditions.” She pointed out that the delay in the start of the school year in Tyre was linked to the time needed to secure and prepare suitable alternatives, based on a clear decision not to evacuate any center before securing a suitable alternative for the families residing there. The Ministry of Education stressed that responding to shelter needs is a shared national responsibility, and not its sole responsibility, noting that since the beginning of the war it has shouldered a large part of this responsibility by placing a large number of its schools and institutions at the service of the humanitarian response, and to this day more than 70 official educational institutions are still being used for shelter purposes. The statement concluded: “The goal is not to make a comparison between shelter and education, but rather to work together to secure them both.”