GAZA, Oct 5 (Reuters) - A third of Palestinian children at United Nations schools in Hamas-run Gaza struggle to read and write because violence and an Israeli blockade are disrupting their education, a United Nations agency said on Friday.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which runs refugee schools in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, said children in the Gaza Strip were lagging way behind Palestinian refugee students elsewhere.

In Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, children in UNRWA schools scored well in exams and outperformed their peers in government schools.

But in Gaza, independent tests showed more than two thirds of students flunked maths exams while literacy failure rates hovered about 30-40 percent, UNRWA said. No comparison with public schools was available.

"Among other things, the cumulative impact of years of violence and closures, of disrupted schooling and endemic poverty is clear from the stark exam results of Gaza's schoolchildren," John Ging, head of UNRWA in Gaza, said in a statement.

Hamas militants routed their Fatah rivals and violently seized control of Gaza in June, prompting Israel to tighten restrictions on the flow of people and goods and virtually freezing economic activity.

UNRWA runs more than 200 schools in Gaza while the Palestinian Authority has some 350 schools, the agency said.

Due to a shortage of buildings, about 80 percent of UNRWA schools operate on a double shift system -- with lessons for one set of pupils in the morning and another wave in the afternoon.

The agency in July suspended plans to build new schools because supplies of concrete had been cut back by Israeli border closures.

UNRWA said on Friday it planned to hire an extra 1,500 classroom assistants to try and improve education levels in Gaza. It would also add extra classes in Arabic and maths, and build a new teacher training college.

The agency's schools are open to children of Palestinian refugees who fled their homes or were driven out by Israel when the Jewish state was founded in 1948. The UN estimates about two-thirds of Gaza's 1.5 million population are refugees.

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