President Salva Kiir promised on Friday to support the country’s education sector by ensuring proper remuneration of teachers to address poor and delayed salary payments amid a severe economic crisis.
Kiir spoke in a meeting with State Governors, Chief Administrators and Education Ministers in Juba, according to a statement from the Office of the President.
The president “promised to allocate resources to ensure that teachers are properly trained and remunerated and that schools are equipped with the necessary resources to provide quality education to all students,” it said.
Teachers in public primary and secondary schools, like any other civil servants across the country, are now going for eight months without receiving their salaries.
The education sector is also facing numerous challenges including the stagnating marking of national examination papers.
Students who set for the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE) in December 2023 are left in limbo and have not seen their results seven months later, as the 2024-2025 academic calendar slips away in an election year.
According to the UN’s children agency UNICEF, South Sudan has the world’s third-lowest literacy rate with about 2.8 million children out of school.
Public expenditure on education in South Sudan is also said to be one of the lowest in the world. The sector is also suffering from low investment and low capacity, with its administration and management weakened by conflicts.
The national constitution states that basic education must be free and compulsory to all children in the country – a provision recently invoked by President Kiir to encourage literacy in the country
Further, the Institute of Development Studies has found that teachers in South Sudan remain poorly and irregularly paid – leading to qualified teachers deserting for better-paying jobs.
This has resulted in schools hiring primary and secondary school leavers with limited proficiency in English – the language of instruction.
According to Kiir’s office, the Minister of General Education and Instructions, Awut Deng Acuil, praised the President for his dedication to the education sector and his commitment to improving the quality of education in South Sudan.
It was also stated that the Governor of Western Bahr el Ghazal Sarah Cleto Rial said the meeting highlighted the importance of investing in education and working together to provide quality education to the youth of South Sudan.
“The government’s commitment to addressing the challenges facing the education sector was reaffirmed, and plans for improving teacher training, payment, and school infrastructure were discussed.”