Since the era of the Condominium rule in the Sudan, Southern Sudan has never had an educational system that was expansive, relevant and which targets its needs. For most of the years of the Condominium rule, the educational system served/aimed to produce junior public servants and also made a few of the people literate in indigenous languages. After independence, successive national governments in Khartoum changed the system in order to achieve their strategic policies. Consequently, during the post-independence period Southern Sudan has been imposed upon an educational system that was irrelevant to its needs, culture and aspirations.
This situation has been exacerbated by successive and debilitating wars, ever changing educational ladder and language policies. These, coupled with the last twenty-two years of civil war, Southern Sudan has found itself without quality and equitable education for the majority of its people, especially the children. The education situation and conditions that met the newly formed MOEST in November 2005 can be described as:
Research conducted by the New Sudan Centre for Statistics in Association with UNICEF has found that children in Southern Sudan have the least access to primary education in the world.

In a country of about 7.5 million people, almost one million school-age children (over 75% of the total) do not have access to education.



Only 2,500 children complete primary school each year and, of this number, only 500 are girls. Primary enrolment is also affected by an inordinately high percentage of over-age learners.



Most, if not all, of the education officers and head teachers do not have minimum academic and professional qualifications or experience.



Only 7% of teachers have had a single year of training, and about half of all teachers have not received any professional training. Many teachers have not even completed grade 8.



An estimated 7% of teachers are female and less than 1% of head teachers are women.



In November 2006, the first post war assessment of education sector, the Rapid Assessment of Learning Spaces (RALS), conducted in all the 10 Southern Sudan states by MoEST and UNICEF, concluded:
The vast majority of learning spaces were found to provide insufficient cover for children and teachers.
Only 461 of the 2,922 learning spaces assessed have permanent classrooms. A total of 913 learning spaces conduct classes outdoors, making open-air facilities the most common type of learning space. Semi-permanent learning spaces, or learning spaces constructed using local materials, are the second largest category with 833 identified learning spaces, while 313 communities had constructed a basic roof structure using grass or plastic.
On average, each learning space caters to 7.8 communities, meaning that children often have to walk long distances in order to attend school. The average student-teacher ratio in Southern Sudan is 50:1. A mere 31 per cent of all learning spaces were found to have access to a toilet or latrine. Forty per cent of learning spaces had water available on-site or within easy walking distance (within 500 meters).
The majority of learning spaces do not have access to a feeding or food distribution programme. Only 456 learning spaces, representing 16 per cent of the total number assessed, were found to be receiving some form of food assistance. Hunger was one of the most commonly cited reasons for not attending school. Barely 26 per cent of learning spaces assessed have chairs or desks; an estimated half of these have chairs and desks for teachers only. One learning space in five does not have a chalkboard.
The RALS exercise found a total of 758,207 students attending the 2,922 learning spaces assessed. Of these students, 700,448 are enrolled in primary-level education, including 236,434 girls and 464,014 boys. Girls therefore constitute 34 per cent of the total number of primary-level students enrolled. A total of 94,841 children in primary-level learning spaces were identified as being ‘vulnerable children,’ including child soldiers, orphans, children with disabilities and separated children. This figure represents 13 per cent of all children enrolled in primary-level education.
The total number of teachers in the learning spaces assessed was found to be 17,920. Only 14 per cent (2,423) of these are women. Female teachers are also concentrated in urban areas, a phenomenon that helps to perpetuate the gender gap and cultural norms regarding girls’ education in rural areas. While teachers in 56 per cent of learning spaces have had access to some form of teacher training in the recent past, most teachers lack formal training or adequate educational preparation.
At the moment and since the 2006 launch of the ‘Go to School’ initiative - the MoEST and partners roadmap to improve the situation, over 4,000 metric tonnes of school
Supplies have been distributed and over 2,500 teachers have been trained. Enrolment has risen to 850,000 from an estimated 343,000 during the civil war. Over one-third of students are now girls – far from the rate needed to achieve gender parity, but a dramatic increase from the abysmally low levels before 2005. The major challenge to the ‘Go-to- School’ initiative is learning spaces. In an environment where building materials are scarce and skilled labor hard to find, the construction of permanent, child-friendly schools remains a challenge. However, the intensive planning process initiated during 2006 has paid off during the first dry season of 2007.