Amid repeated school closings and reopenings in the Kurdish-led autonomous administration of north and east Syria (widely known as Rojava), the Kurdish language is now being taught in most parts of the Jazira region. However, going down that particular road was — and still is — complicated, to say the least.

In 2012, after the Kurdish Language Institute decided to teach Kurdish in schools across Jazira, the Ministry of Education affiliated with the Syrian regime shut those schools down. The Kurdish nationalist Democratic Union Party (PYD) then had the doors broken down to keep giving Kurdish lessons.

The two sides subsequently agreed that three Kurdish courses per week would be taught to ninth-grade students and five courses to seventh- and eighth-grade students instead of Arabic, computer, social sciences and science courses.

In 2015, the Kurdish-led autonomous administration replaced the Syrian regime's primary education curriculum with its own in the areas it controlled. This led the regime's Education Ministry to prevent its teachers from cooperating, causing primary education courses to be suspended. Meanwhile, schools in areas under regime control taught classes as usual.