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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Sudan
Index
The public and private education systems inherited by the
government after independence were designed more to provide civil
servants and professionals to serve the colonial administration
than to educate the Sudanese. Moreover, the distribution of
facilities, staff, and enrollment was biased in favor of the
needs of the administration and a Western curriculum. Schools
tended to be clustered in the vicinity of Khartoum and to a
lesser extent in other urban areas, although the population was
predominantly rural. This concentration was found at all levels
but was most marked for those in situations beyond the four-year
primary schools where instruction was in the vernacular. The
north suffered from shortages of teachers and buildings, but
education in the south was even more inadequate. During the
condominium, education in the south was left largely to the
mission schools, where the level of instruction proved so poor
that as early as the mid-1930s the government imposed provincial
education supervisors upon the missionaries in return for the
government subsidies that they sorely needed. The civil war and
the ejection of all foreign missionaries in February 1964 further
diminished education opportunities for southern Sudanese.
Since World War II the demand for education had exceeded
Sudan's education resources. At independence in 1956, education
accounted for only 15.5 percent of the Sudanese budget, or £Sd45
million
(
Sudanese pound--for value, see Glossary),
to support
1,778 primary schools (enrollment 208,688), 108 intermediate
schools (enrollment 14,632), and 49 government secondary schools
(enrollment 5,423). Higher education was limited to the
University of Khartoum, except for less than 1,000 students sent
abroad by wealthy parents or on government scholarships. The
adult literacy rate in 1956 was 22.9 percent, and, despite the
efforts of successive governments, by 1990 it had risen only to
about 30 percent in the face of a rapidly expanding population.
The philosophy and curriculum beyond primary school followed
the British educational tradition. Although all students learned
Arabic and English in secondary and intermediate schools, the
language of instruction at the University of Khartoum was
English. Moreover, the increasing demand for intermediate,
secondary, and higher education could not be met by Sudanese
teachers alone, at least not by the better educated ones
graduated from the elite teacher-training college at Bakht ar
Ruda. As a result, education in Sudan continued to depend upon
expensive foreign teachers.
When the Nimeiri-led government took power in 1969, it
considered the education system inadequate for the needs of
social and economic development. Accordingly, an extensive
reorganization was proposed, which would eventually make the new
six-year elementary education program compulsory and would pay
much more attention to technical and vocational education at all
levels. Previously, primary and intermediate schools had been
preludes to secondary training, and secondary schools prepared
students for the university. The system produced some well-
trained university graduates, but little was done to prepare for
technical work or skilled labor the great bulk of students who
did not go as far as the university or even secondary school.
By the late 1970s, the government's education system had been
largely reorganized. There were some preprimary schools, mainly
in urban areas. The basic system consisted of a six-year
curriculum in primary schools and three-year curriculum in junior
secondary schools. From that point, qualified students could go
on to one of three kinds of schools: the three-year upper
secondary, which prepared students for higher education;
commercial and agricultural technical schools; and teacher-
training secondary schools designed to prepare primary-school
teachers. The latter two institutions offered four-year programs.
Postsecondary schools included universities, higher technical
schools, intermediate teacher-training schools for junior
secondary teachers, and higher teacher-training schools for
upper-secondary teachers (see
table 4, Appendix).
Of the more than 5,400 primary schools in 1980, less than 14
percent were located in southern Sudan, which had between 20 and
33 percent of the country's population. Many of these southern
schools were established during the Southern Regional
administration (1972-81). The renewal of the civil war in mid-
1983 destroyed many schools, although the SPLA operated schools
in areas under its control. Nevertheless, many teachers and
students were among the refugees fleeing the ravages of war in
the south.
In the early 1980s, the number of junior (also called
general) secondary schools was a little more than one-fifth the
number of primary schools, a proportion roughly consistent with
that of general secondary to primary-school population (260,000
to 1,334,000). About 6.5 percent of all general secondary schools
were in the south until 1983.
There were only 190 upper-secondary schools in the public
system in 1980, but it was at this level that private schools of
varying quality proliferated, particularly in the three cities of
the capital area. Elite schools could recruit students who had
selected them as a first choice, but the others took students
whose examination results at the end of junior secondary school
did not gain them entry to the government's upper secondary
schools.
In 1980, despite the emphasis on technical education proposed
by the government and encouraged by various international
advisory bodies, there were only thirty-five technical schools in
Sudan, less than one-fifth the number of academic upper secondary
schools. In 1976-77 eight times as many students entered the
academic stream as entered the technical schools, creating a
profound imbalance in the marketplace. Moreover, prospective
employers often found technical school graduates inadequately
trained, a consequence of sometimes irrelevant curricula, low
teacher morale, and lack of equipment. Performance may also have
suffered because of the low morale of students, many of whom
tended to see this kind of schooling as second choice at best, a
not surprising view given the system's past emphasis on academic
training, and the low status of manual labor, at least among much
of the Arab population. The technical schools were meant to
include institutions for training skilled workers in agriculture,
but few of the schools were directed to that end, most of them
turning out workers more useful in the urban areas.
The hope for universal and compulsory education had not been
realized by the early 1980s, but as a goal it led to a more
equitable distribution of facilities and teachers in rural areas
and in the south. During the 1980s, the government established
more schools at all levels and with them, more teacher-training
schools, although these were never sufficient to provide adequate
staff. But the process was inherently slow and was made slower by
limited funds and by the inadequate compensation for staff;
teachers who could find a market for their skills elsewhere,
including places outside Sudan, did not remain teachers within
the Sudanese system.
The proliferation of upper-level technical schools has not
dealt with what most experts saw as Sudan's basic education
problem: providing a primary education to as many Sudanese
children as possible. Establishing more primary schools was, in
this view, more important that achieving equity in the
distribution of secondary schools. Even more important was the
development of a primary-school curriculum that was geared to
Sudanese experience and took into account that most of those who
completed six years of schooling did not go further. The
realistic assumption was that Sudan's resources were limited and
that expenditures on the postprimary level limited expenditures
on the primary level, leaving most Sudanese children with an
inadequate education. In the early 1990s this situation had not
significantly changed.
In the mid-1970s, there were four universities, eleven
colleges, and twenty-three institutes in Sudan. The universities
were in the capital area, and all of the institutions of higher
learning were in the northern provinces. Colleges were
specialized degree-granting institutions. Institutes granted
diplomas and certificates for periods of specialized study
shorter than those commonly demanded at universities and
colleges. These postsecondary institutions and universities had
provided Sudan with a substantial number of well-educated persons
in some fields but left it short of technical personnel and
specialists in sciences relevant to the country's largely rural
character.
By 1980 two new universities had opened, one in Al Awsat
Province at Wad Madani, the other in Juba in Al Istiwai Province,
and in 1981 there was talk of opening a university in Darfur,
which was nearly as deprived of educational facilities as the
south. By 1990 some institutes had been upgraded to colleges, and
many had become part of an autonomous body called the Khartoum
Institute of Technical Colleges (also referred to as Khartoum
Polytechnic). Some of its affiliates were outside the capital
area, for example, the College of Mechanical Engineering at
Atbarah, northeast of Khartoum, and Al Jazirah College of
Agriculture and Natural Resources at Abu Naamah in Al Awsat.
The oldest university was the University of Khartoum, which
was established as a university in 1956. In 1990 it enrolled
about 12,000 students in degree programs ranging from four to six
years in length. Larger but less prestigious was the Khartoum
branch of the University of Cairo with 13,000 students. The size
of the latter and perhaps its lack of prestige reflected the fact
that many if not most of its students worked to support
themselves and attended classes in the afternoon and at night,
although some day classes were introduced in 1980. Tuition only
at the Khartoum branch was free, whereas all costs at the fully
residential University of Khartoum were paid for by the
government. At the Institute of Higher Technical Studies, which
had 4,000 students in 1990, tuition was free, and a monthly grant
helped to defray but did not fully cover other expenses. The
smallest of the universities in the capital area was the
specialized Islamic University of Omdurman, which existed chiefly
to train Muslim religious judges and scholars.
The University of Juba, established in 1977, graduated its
first class in 1981. It was intended to provide education for
development and for the civil service for southern Sudan,
although it was open to students from the whole country. In its
first years, it enrolled a substantial number of civil servants
from the south for further training, clearly needed in an area
where many in the civil service had little educational
opportunity in their youth. After the outbreak of hostilities in
the south in 1983, the university was moved to Khartoum, a move
that had severely curtailed its instructional programs, but the
university continued to operate again in Juba in the late 1980s.
Al Jazirah College of Agriculture and Natural Resources was also
intended to serve the country as a whole, but its focus was
consistent with its location in the most significant agricultural
area in Sudan.
Of particular interest was the dynamic growth and expansion
of Omdurman Ahlia University. It was established by academics,
professionals, and businesspeople in 1982 upon the hundredth
anniversary of the founding of the city of Omdurman and was
intended to meet the ever-growing demand for higher education and
training. The university was to be nongovernmental, job oriented,
and self-supporting. Support came mainly from private donations,
foreign foundations, and the government, which approved the
allotment of thirty acres of prime land on the western outskirts
of Omdurman for the campus. Its curriculum, taught in English and
oriented to job training pertinent to the needs of Sudan, had
attracted more than 1,800 students by 1990. Its emphasis on
training in administration, environmental studies, physics and
mathematics, and library science had proven popular.
Data as of June 1991
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