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Sudan
EDUCATION
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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