The heads of Christian denominations in northeast Syria announced an agreement with the SDF-run administration that allows church-run schools to continue teaching the Syrian Ministry of Education curriculum during the 2025–26 academic year. The administration had sought to ban the Damascus curriculum outright this year, after previously allowing private schools to use it, but the move triggered protests from Christian and Arab communities who argue that only the Damascus curriculum is internationally recognised.

Context: There are roughly 35 privately run Christian schools in northeast Syria, largely concentrated in al-Hasakah province. On 30 September, the Autonomous Administration closed Christian schools in areas under its control. In Qamishli, Internal Security forces entered five Christian-affiliated private schools, expelled administrators and students, and shut them down. The closures followed church leaders’ refusal to adopt the Administration’s own curriculum and their insistence on keeping the official Syrian government syllabus.

Bishop Mor Maurice Amseih, who heads the Syriac Orthodox Archdiocese of al-Jazira and the Euphrates, told the Damascus-run state news agency SANA on 7 October that the archdiocese “categorically rejects the imposition of the SDF curriculum or any curriculum not officially recognised,” adding that schools belonging to the Christian denominations “will only adopt the curriculum issued by the Syrian Ministry of Education, which is internationally recognised.” He said the SDF presented only two options: the Autonomous Administration’s curriculum or a UNICEF curriculum, neither licensed by the Ministry of Education in Damascus. “This is entirely unacceptable,” he argued, “because it jeopardises students’ futures and exposes the schools to losing their licences.”

The Autonomous Administration argues that the schools in question are private, fee-charging institutions that only carry church names and are not formally subordinate to the churches. Adnan Bri, the co-chair of the Education and Teaching Authority in the Autonomous Administration, says some continue to use the “Ba’ath-era Damascus curriculum, which it deems contrary to its Social Contract mandating free education and a unified syllabus taught in each community’s language”. He also denied closing schools, describe their policy as curriculum standardisation.

Analysis: This latest round of pushback highlights a less discussed dynamic: the political weight of Christian communities in the northeast, particularly in areas where they overlap with Kurdish-majority zones in northern al-Hasakah, including al-Hasakah city, Derik, Qamishli, and Tel Tamer. Debate about the region’s future usually centres on Arab demographics in relation to Damascus, but Christians have shown greater resistance to accepting SDF rule or adopting its education system.

Interestingly, despite the new post-Assad regime in Damascus being HTS-run – in contrast to the secular Kurdish-led SDF – Christians continue to prefer Damascus, which might seem surprising at first glance. This preference is rooted in historic animosity stemming from overlapping territorial claims, as many ethnic Syriac, Assyrian, and Chaldean Christians view Kurds as encroaching on their ancestral lands across the Iraq-Syria-Turkey triangle, which is majority Kurdish.

The churches’ success in securing an exemption from the SDF-led curriculum is important not only for this case but as a precedent that complicates any push to unify education under a single syllabus. If church-run private schools are exempt, it becomes harder to justify imposing the SDF curriculum on other private schools. Moreover, if the administration proceeds while distinguishing between Christian and non-Christian (notably Arab) private schools, it risks fuelling perceptions that it is favouring Christians—perhaps due to external considerations, including concern about Western reactions.

There is also a symbolic dimension: the decision has sparked region-wide debate, including among Kurds. Some argue the compromise is prudent, avoiding instability at a delicate moment amid talks with Damascus; others see capitulation to Christian demands from communities they view as insufficiently appreciative, especially given SDF protection at a time when, they note, the current HTS order persecuted Christians only a few years ago.

If the exemption ends up applying only to these Church-run schools, still unclear given how new the deal is, it could embarrass Arab tribes aligned with the SDF, who are already walking a tightrope between backing the SDF’s core Kurdish agenda and constituencies favouring renewed ties with post-Assad Damascus.

While the tribes remain the SDF’s largest demographic challenge, this episode shows that Christians are still central to the region’s political calculus, not least because Western capitals, especially the Trump administration, attach outsized importance to Christian minorities. For the SDF, the upshot is an even finer balancing act: pushing curricular uniformity and autonomy while governing core Kurdish areas that sit alongside sizeable Christian communities.