Lebanon's education sector suffers from chronic problems that date back decades, to before the country's civil war. There have long been enormous disparities between Lebanon's public and private schools. The crisis worsened in 2012-2013, when the mass Syrian displacement brought a flood of Syrian students into Lebanese schools and pushed even more Lebanese students to opt for private schooling.

According to statistics from the Center for Educational Research and Development published in 2014 and 2015, private and UNRWA schools in Lebanon accommodate more than 70% of Lebanese students, and only 28% of Lebanon's students go to public schools. The public education sector is plagued by curricula problems created by the influx of Syrian students, particularly to the rural areas close to the Lebanese-Syrian borders where the refugee camps are located and to some cities that have attracted large numbers of Syrians like Tripoli, Akkar, Nabatieh and the Bekaa cities.

Head of the Private Schools Teachers Syndicate Nehme Mahfouz told Al-Monitor, “Around 20 years ago, students were equally distributed between private and public schools. But the balance has tipped in favor of private schools in the past few years, despite the significant increase in tuition every year.”

The head of the media department at the Public Primary Schools Teachers League in Lebanon, Adnan Bourji, told Al-Monitor, “Syrian students reached 123,000 during the school year 2015-2016 and increased to 200,000 in the 2016-2017 school year. With that, their numbers grew even with Lebanese students in public schools.”