Education

South Sudan was embroiled in a civil war from mid-December 2013 to mid-
September 2018. Nearly 400,000 people died, and several million were displaced.
The economy nearly collapsed as the nation’s output was severely reduced, causing
inflation to soar. While prior research on the immediate humanitarian crisis in
South Sudan has focused on forced displacement and food insecurity, there is little
information available about the long-term impact the war had on human capital
accumulation in this context. This analysis exploits spatial variation in exposure
to violence to estimate the causal impact of the recent civil war on primary school
enrollment as a proxy for measuring human capital accumulation. Results based
on the difference-in-differences methodology indicate a statistically significant
relationship between school enrollment and the war. The study shows that schools
located in the South Sudanese war zones lost 85 children per year on average, or
18.5 percent of total enrollment. The diminishing trends in girls’ enrollment are
unrelated to the war, which is not surprising; social barriers, including gendered
domestic roles, early marriage, and out-of-wedlock pregnancies, have long impeded
female educational opportunities in South Sudan. These effects are robust to a
number of specifications, including holding constant school-level fixed effects and
adjusting for the standard errors. The article presents important policy implications
for education and the labor market, both locally and internationally.

Anyone looking for inspirational examples of dedication, perseverance, resilience and strength of character should look no further than the students and teachers featured in this year’s report on refugees and education.
From Ecuador to Jordan, from Iran to Ethiopia, these young refugees and the adults who support them realize how much living a life in dignity and preparing for solutions depend on access to full and formal quality education.
The gap between refugees and their peers is still wide, especially at the higher levels of education. Given the continued rise in the overall number of the world’s forcibly displaced, keeping education enrollment rates steady is no small feat.

Whilst education is most often viewed as central to peace-building, it is important to note that it has two faces. Education can be a strong tool in exacerbating violent conflict whilst on the positive side facilitate peace building through addressing the drivers of a conflict. The review draws from academic research on literature from NGOs and donors showing the links between education, conflict and peace. Education has been considered as a salient feature in emergency response featuring on its role as a peace dividend and an entry point to conflict transformation and peace-building (Smith and Ellison, 2015). However, gaps exist in literature on evidence showing how to programme education to address the needs of refugees and populations in conflict areas. Much of the literature reviewed emphasises the need for context specific conflict analysis with a focus on education for understanding how and under what circumstances education can address conflict and instability.

This report examines child and forced marriage in South Sudan. The report suggests that child marriage has a significant negative impact on women and girl’s realization of key human rights, including their rights to health and education, physical integrity and the right to marry only when they are able and willing to give their free consent.

This report is part of the collection of publications on “Education, Conflict and Civicness in South Sudan”, which is the outcome of a collaboration between the South Sudan Studies Association (SSSA) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

If universities are to contribute to political transformation and civicness in conflict settings, they must foster gender equality. This is an exceptional challenge in the context of South Sudan, where female literacy was last estimated at under 30 percent and where universities have been affected by conflict and resource shortages. Societal dynamics arising out of a patriarchal society mean that the ratio of boys and girls enrolled in schools remains unequal. This persists at the university level, resulting in fewer females joining universities as students and academics. But even those who are admitted face complex challenges. This paper explores whether and how the University of Juba is promoting equality and inclusion in practice and assesses the implications. It examines the existence of formal and informal policies, attitudes towards teaching certain courses, attitudes of students towards female students and lecturers, and attitudes of non-teaching staff at the College of Law and at the Institute for Peace, Development and Security Studies. The research offers recommendations on how the prevailing situation could be mitigated and how the university can counter gender inequality to build on what has been achieved so far.

Basic education is a fundamental economic necessity, but circumstances such as armed violence often make its effective provision quite grim. This is particularly pertinent in South Sudan where the delivery of social services has been greatly undermined by a recent violence. This policy brief analyzes the impacts of South Sudan’s ongoing violence on education in the three states of Upper Nile. Our findings indicate that the war has led to pronounced reductions in educational activities and resources in the area, with school closure and mass outmigration as a result. We recommend to both the government and the humanitarian community to pay considerable attention to the educational priorities of the communities in question, paying teachers regularly, and supplying necessary inputs for continued learning in the area. Continued investments in education, even in the time of mass violence, reduce future social injustice and set stage for needed stability in the country.

Minimum quality standards for education are common in low and lower middle-income countries. However, the scope and use of these standards are determined by the country’s level of development. Therefore, some countries have advanced standards, whilst others have simple tools and frameworks to guide the quality of their basic education.
Minimum standards are used to monitor, evaluate and inspect the quality of education provision. As such they can also improve accountability in education. However, the availability of minimum quality education frameworks and tools in a country does not always mean they are effective as the availability of both technical and financial resources affects implementation.
Overall, minimum standards of basic education contribute to different aspects of quality education. For example, compliance to school infrastructure and environment might promote the safety, health and general well-being of the learners but if the standards of the teacher quality and teaching learning resources are not met then good students’ learning outcomes may not be achieved. Generally, there is an agreement and assumption that the use of minimum standards supports the harmonisation of education provisions and can contribute to quality education.

This rapid review focusses on efforts to mitigate the educational impact of previous disease outbreaks, concentrating on school-age learners. It follows two companion papers that reviewed broader secondary effects and attempts to mitigate them (Rohwerder, 2020; Kelly, 2020). It aims to inform the education sector’s responses to the COVID-19 crisis, although there are important differences between previous disease outbreaks and the COVID-19 situation. For instance, unlike Ebola, transmission of COVID-19 is asymptomatic, and the outbreak is global. This review finds a limited range of quantitative evidence on the educational impact of disease outbreaks, and minimal evidence on mitigation measures or their impact. Although several ‘lessons learned’ documents include guidelines and recommendations (and now complemented by many education-focused COVID-responsive blogs), this review finds that these are rarely based on evidence of impact of particular interventions, or on evidence of the impact of different approaches to action, co-ordinations, funding or prioritisation. The review found four particular evidence gaps: First, how distance learning materials can support learners who do not have access to family members with the skills or time to help them. Second, a gap in the use of screen or internet-enabled technologies to support alternative education. Third (and related), a gap in remote teacher training and development during school closures. Finally, the review analysed gender and equity issues but did not find any literature that explored disability. The education in emergencies literature has an emerging evidence base across all four themes within refugee education contexts, but has not yet learnt from or applied this evidence to disease outbreak situations.

This article discusses the relationship between education and armed conflict in Sudan and South Sudan, and particularly the role of teachers in peace and reconciliation efforts. The periods covered are the North-South civil war from 1955 to 2005, the interim period between 2005 and 2011 with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and the current civil war in South Sudan which started two years after South Sudan’s independence in 2013.

The article shows that teachers are not always promoters of peace and reconciliation, and that their teaching in class to a large extent is context-dependent. The teachers in the Islamic schools during the first civil war had few options but to teach according to the Islamic curriculum and thus cemented the self-Other dichotomy between the Northerners and the Southerners in the conflict-ridden country. Moreover, the article shows that the teachers in the liberation areas in the South during the first civil war chose deliberately a confrontation strategy against their oppressors from the North that coincided with the resistance war.

In the civil war inside South Sudan from 2013 a different teaching pattern emerged where the teachers discussed openly the atrocities of the North during the first civil war, but applied an avoidance strategy in class when teaching about the civil war inside the South. It was perceived to be less of a dilemma to teach contemporary history without touching upon domestic conflict and ethnic rivalry than to teach about conflicts in the South which seriously undermined any idea of social cohesion. Undoubtedly, the teachers felt strongly that it was necessary to treat history teaching carefully, and that there is a fine line between what should and should not be told. There was a perception among teachers that debating the domestic civil war might cause unrest and conflict in class whereas any discussion of the South-North war would not since very few, if any of the students had any allegiance to the North and the Islamic discourse. The article thus raises the question of the relationship between the teachers’ solutions to these dilemmas and education’s role in conflict situations.

This review identified enablers and barriers to the successful delivery of accelerated learning programmes and complementary education. The policy environment is identified as being an overarching factor that can behave as both an enabler and a barrier, with contexts that integrate non-formal education into policy texts being among the most enabling. Other enablers and barriers are explored in relation to programme delivery, followed by a brief exploration of learners transitioning into the formal education system. The report identified inconsistencies in the terminology surrounding accelerated learning and complementary learning programmes, and has therefore adopted the most common language used: accelerated education programmes (AEPs). A key reflection from this review is on the tension that exists between successful AEPs integrating effectively with national systems, whilst also remaining independent enough to overcome the barriers faced by those same systems.