South Sudan, on the road to education reform

06 October 2015

The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST) of the Republic of South Sudan has launched in collaboration with UNESCO Juba and IIEP, its Education Sector Analysis (ESA), marking a key step in establishing a roadmap for a resilient, equitable and quality-focused education system for all.

The ESA will explore issues around access, quality, equity and management from pre-school, primary and secondary levels through to higher education, including Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) and non-formal education. The overall goal of the ESA is to provide decision makers with a comprehensive picture of the education system in 2015 – including its strengths and weaknesses – to help improve policy-making and to allocate limited resources more efficiently.

The ESA also acts as the basis for the development of the country’s Education Sector Plan (ESP) – that will outline major educational priorities and targets for the South Sudanese government over the next three years.

Planning for resilience

While traditional aspects of an education system will be analyzed, it will also be tailored to the specific context of South Sudan. With a long history of conflict and renewed fighting since December 2013, the education system has been a causality of war.

Since the latest conflict erupted, at least 866,000 school-aged children have been displaced, often to places bereft of safe learning spaces or host communities with few opportunities. As a result, an estimated 400,000 children are now out of school, according to the Education for All 2015 National Review for South Sudan

The new ESA will build on an analysis of South Sudan’s education system that was first carried out in 2010, just months prior to its July 2011 independence from Sudan. This new version will, for the first time, mainstream risk-disaster and conflict analysis throughout the report.

Both the ESA and the resulting ESP will also be used to attract financial support for South Sudan’s national education reform.

The development of the ESA and ESP is financially supported by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), Protect Education in Insecurity and Conflict (PEIC), UNICEF in Eastern and Southern Africa (ESARO), GIZ Backup and UNESCO