Nearly Seven Million Sudanese Children Absent From School Amid Learning Crisis

Some 12 million youngsters also face the prospect of having their “school years heavily interrupted by a lack of sufficient teachers, infrastructure, and an enabling learning environment,” UNICEF and Save the Children have warned.

A veritable “generational catastrophe” may be looming over Sudan where a staggering number of children find themselves unable to go to school.

Over 600 schools in the country got destroyed in August and September due to flooding and “attacks by militias”, with the situation further exacerbated by the lack of qualified teachers and teaching staff strikes, not to mention the effect of the COVID pandemic, The Guardian has reported.

UNICEF and Save the Children warned in a joint statement issued last month that about 6.9 million kids, or “one in three school-aged children”, do not go to school in Sudan, while a further 12 million “will have their school years heavily interrupted by a lack of sufficient teachers, infrastructure, and an enabling learning environment”.

“Without urgent action, the learning crisis in Sudan will become a generational catastrophe,” the statement argued.

The Guardian also noted that many children in Sudan have to forgo education in order to find sustenance.

“They simply cannot go to school while they are hungry. Many of them have to go to the market to sell plastic bags or anything just to feed themselves,” explained Ahmed el-Safi, a teacher and former school head in Um-Oshar, who revealed that three to four children in each household on his street weren’t attending school.