IRAQ: The school toilets lack water, sewage floods the classrooms when it rains, there is no electricity and bits of decayed concrete sometimes crash into the playground.
Neighbours dump rubbish over the crumbling perimeter wall of Baghdad's Faw primary school for boys, whose plight illustrates how far Iraq's once-envied education system has fallen.
Even if Iraq escapes a threatened US-led invasion and finds a way to end United Nations sanctions, it will take many years to rebuild the capacity to equip young Iraqis with badly needed skills, according to UNICEF, the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund .
"Other sectors such as health care and sanitation have bottomed out, but education is still really deteriorating," according to UNICEF's communication officer, Mr Geoffrey Keele.
Faw runs two shifts a day for its 963 pupils from the sprawling slums of Saddam City, a Baghdad district which is home to an estimated two million people.
"When it rains in winter, the water falls on the children's heads and the pupils can't attend classes," according to the school's head teacher, Mr Lutfi Abdullah. "There has been no repair work or extra building at this school since it opened in 1963."
The government meets the other needs of the school, he says, as swarms of excited youngsters lay on an impromptu demonstration of loyalty to President Saddam Hussein. "With soul, with blood, we sacrifice for you, Saddam," they shriek in ragged unison.
The UN embargo imposed for Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, has exacerbated the long-term neglect at Faw, which is now on the education ministry's waiting list for rehabilitation.
The ministry's problems however are legion. It says it needs to build 5,000 new schools to catch up with Iraq's explosive population growth and rehabilitate 4,500 old ones. In the 1970s, Arabs from neighbouring countries used to send their children to school in Iraq. Ninety per cent of Iraqi children, boys and girls equally, were in primary school.
"Now with the effect of the Gulf War and sanctions, the school system is disintegrating," Mr Keele says. "There has been no new building and little change in the curriculum."
UNICEF figures show that one in four of Iraqi children aged six to 11 is now staying away from school - the figure for girls is 30 per cent, an ominous indicator for the future.
Sending girls to school is widely seen as a powerful weapon in reducing child mortality and boosting household income, with positive effects for the wider economy.
Iraq's economy is so impoverished after successive wars and 12 years of sanctions that parents are removing their children from school in the immediate struggle to make ends meet. "Girls stay out of school because their mothers are entering the workforce. They end up looking after siblings, cooking, doing household work," Mr Keele says. "Boys are leaving due to demoralising school conditions or to work."
Inflation has ravaged middle-class salaries, prompting some Iraqis to query education's value in a land where taxi drivers or labourers can now earn more than doctors or engineers.
"The long-term implications are devastating," Mr Keele says. "A skilled workforce will be needed after sanctions are lifted and it will be missing."
Once sanctions go, Iraq may want to rebuild its oil sector before devoting significant funds to education. It might take several years for schools to get back in shape, but that will not mean the battle is over, he suggests.
"You can build the physical infrastructure quickly, but rebuilding the skill base can take a couple of decades."
In the meantime, UNICEF is doing what it can.
It has helped the authorities to rehabilitate more than 400 of the 4,500 schools which need restoration, mostly since 1996 when the oil-for-food deal with the United Nations allowed Iraq to import humanitarian goods.
Among those restored is Ishtirakiya, a girls primary school not far from Faw. Attendance shot up after the repair work in 2001.
Here there is running water in the freshly tiled toilets, glass in the windows and electricity to power an air-cooler.
White paint covers the walls and the now smoothly cemented playground has been raised to prevent flooding.
In the corridors, along with a row of heart-shaped paper cut-outs inscribed by the pupils in praise of Saddam, are old cooking oil cans fixed to the railings as waste bins.
Plants in pots, which the little girls brought from home after their school had its face-lift, line the hallway.