BY ADOR RIAK NYIEL, PhD
Firstly, Your Excellency, I salute you in the name of our beloved country, South Sudan. As the number one citizen, I know you hold our beautiful green passport which you have used and will continue to use to travel around the world. Your Excellency, in the words of Nelson Mandela, the iconic freedom fighter, famously said: “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world”. With education our people will burn the bridges and the boundaries of poverty, tribalism, illiteracy, conflict, ignorance, idleness, civilization, corruption, child and forced marriages, and other related vices that are tearing us apart. It is the passport they need!
Secondly, Your Excellency, I profoundly appreciate your leadership in supporting education. The Presidential order of February 2023 for ‘Free and Compulsory Education’, which you reiterated in your speech to the nation on the occasion of the celebration of the 13th Independence anniversary, has a positive impact on schooling in the country. This is a demonstration of a great commitment to education in South Sudan. Both enrollment and retention in our schools have drastically increased.
However, Your Excellency, as Article 29 of our constitution of 2011 (amended 2016) which is emphasized by the General Education Act, 2012, states; “Education is a right for every citizen and all levels of government shall provide access to education without discrimination…”, the government needs to double its efforts.
Your Excellency, although your government has made important achievements in education, the state of affairs in the education sector and specifically, the basic and secondary education demands attention. For example, enrollment stands at 2.2 million learners with an estimated 2.8 million children out of school as of the 2023 education census. A big proportion of the 50,000 teachers have deserted their duty stations. A few student-teachers are enrolling at the colleges of education at the universities and teacher training institutions. This is because the teaching profession has become very unattractive to new entrants. The few Teachers Training Institutes are also depleted.
Your Excellency, as an educationist and a leader of the largest national civic society involved in education, I have traveled widely in the country, visiting many places including; Terekeka, Pibor, Pochalla, Kuajok, Aweil, Kapoeta, Rumbek, Yirol, Awerial, Yambio, Bor, Wau, Maper, Torit, and Narus. During these visits, I saw schools struggling to operate. Children report to school, but there is little teaching and learning at all! Despite the efforts of the government, there’s little school feeding! No basic requirements, the teacher! Those keeping the classrooms open are volunteer teachers! Every comrade is demoralized!
I want to appreciate your trustee, Hon. Awut Deng Acuil, the Minister of General Education and Instruction for keeping our schools open with few resources. As she reported in the cabinet, with her commitment, she successfully continues to engage the friends of the people of South Sudan to fund education. The Minister raised millions of dollars from various key donors to support education in South Sudan in the next three years. Her tenure has seen her introduce measures to improve the quality of education such as teachers’ qualification assessments in the country.
More significantly, she has also eliminated examination malpractices (the machot syndrome); this is a great move that brought credibility to our secondary school qualifications in the country and the region as our students seek admission to universities in East Africa. This will positively contribute to the achievement of the South Sudan vision for 2040. To acquaint herself with the condition of education in the country, Madame Awut visited almost every state/administrative area.
However, Your Excellency, operations are stuck in education from the National to the school levels! Your minister can not execute the reforms in the sector, because there are no funds. The General Education Act 2012 says ‘at least 10%’ of the annual budget must be put into education. This has not been the case, Mr. President! The Ministry of Finance and Planning does not release a budget for education. For example, in the 2022/23 FY, only 45 percent of its annual budget was released.
Subsequently, the 2023/24 FY, has not shown any improvement. Hon. Awut has not been able to pay teachers for the last 8 months, forcing Parents through parent-teacher associations to bear the burden of education of our young citizens. The examination results for the Senior Four conducted in December 2023 have not been released 8 months after they have been administered to the students. Inspection and supervision of the schools have not been done effectively in the last few years. Capitation grants for schools have not been released since 2014. The conduct of Senior 4 cost appropriately over SSP 2 billion alone.
Your Excellency, your new Minister for Finance and Planning, Hon. Dr. Marial Dongrin Ater, a colleague back at the university, is a comrade. Give him a free hand to overhaul the system at the Ministry, he will deliver…and then instruct him to prioritize and release funds for education to be able to effectively run the schools, and particularly pay teachers regularly. This will give meaning to the presidential order and your honest pledge to support education in independence speech.
In conclusion, Mr. President, just as you have rightfully committed oil money for infrastructural development, do the same for education; because the future of this country is in education, and it is the right thing to do. You may call it the Special Fund for Education (SFE)!
This fund will support reforms the government and the Ministry of General Education and Instruction committed itself to in September 2022 at the UN General Assembly to provide an inclusive quality education to all. Improving domestic finances could enable the Ministry to achieve the following:
- Expanding the capacity of school infrastructure (classrooms, toilets, clean water, teacher quarters, etc)
- Train, recruit, and retain qualified teachers
- Pay teachers on time and regularly
- Renovate, equip, and operationalize National Teachers Training Institutes (NTTIs)
- Return the over 2.8 out-of-school children to the system
- Provide mobility, regular monitoring, and supervision of education from the national to school levels
- Timely conduct and release of the national examinations and results
- Develop, print, and distribute learning materials to every child
- Provide education to children with disabilities
- Improve school governance by training parent-teacher-association/school management committees
- Train accounting officers on accountability and transparency on the transfers of education funds, etc.
Furthermore, Your Excellency, I would like to conclude with the following general recommendations for you to improve our national budget credibility;
- Strengthening governments’ revenue planning and forecasting by addressing gaps in technical capacities, providing accurate data, and removing incentives to deflate revenue projections.
- Improving Public Financial Management systems, including accounting and reporting systems; managing public investment; budget execution (including procurement systems and rules for in-year budget adjustments that control the shifting of budgets after they are approved by the legislature)
- Enhancing fiscal transparency practices, such as adopting measures to report whether budgets have been executed as planned, or whether there have been deviations along with clear explanations for the reasons for deviations.
- Oversight bodies, mainly the National Assembly and National Audit Chamber should monitor budget execution more closely and hold leaders/the executive body to account for any deviations
- Provide adequate resources and protect the importance and independence of accountability institutions – They need independence in terms of funding – a separate budget from the Ministry of Finance and Planning.
- Civil society and the media could follow the implementation of priority public services and programs and ensure that governments deliver them fully and effectively and demand explanations when governments fall short e.g. capitation (public expenditure tracking/following the money).
Your Excellency, like Nelson Mandela, you have dedicated most of your life to the liberation of your people and you can transform the future of this country through education. By funding our education, and with Madame Awut Deng Acuil you have a Minister who can assist you to do just that.
The author is the National Coordinator at the National Education Coalition (NEC), a network of over 180 CSOs supporting advocacy on the right to education for all across South Sudan. He is also an Assistant Professor of Education, at the Faculty of Education at Upper Nile University. He can be reached via adorr86@gmail.com.
The views expressed in ‘opinion’ articles published by Radio Tamazuj are solely those of the writer. The veracity of any claims made is the author’s responsibility, not Radio Tamazuj’s.