by Mohamed Hassan – DevelopmentAid Somalia Journalist
From the outbreak of Civil War in Somalia in 1991, all public services were destroyed including the formal education system and infrastructure with qualified professionals fleeing the country. In the absence of an effective central authority to manage education in the country, this important role was filled by educational umbrella networks, community educational committees, international NGOs, regional administrations – notably Puntland (in the North East) and Somaliland (in the North West), religious groups and, in some instances, by the private sector. Their primary function was to support the financing of school staff salaries and the development of a better educational structure.
Current situation in Somalia education sector
According to USAID, of the 4.7 million school-aged population of the total Somali population of 12.3 million, 972,000 children or one out of every five Somali student-aged children is displaced. USAID’s assessments further suggest that even those children who are in school are not learning. Furthermore, Somalia has one of the world’s lowest enrollment rates for primary schools with only 30% of children in Somalia attending school of which only 40% are girls. In terms of adult literacy, at 40%, Somalia has the third-lowest literacy rate among ten neighboring sub-Saharan countries, lower only than Ethiopia (39%) and South Sudan (27%).
Nevertheless, the UN estimate of the literacy rate in Somalia in 1990 was only 24% and in 1972 just 5%. This had been exacerbated by years of civil strife in the country that decimated the formal schooling system leading to a lack of public education, unregulated education systems, inadequate finance and untrained teachers.
According to UNICEF more than three million children in Somalia do not attend school. It further states that those lucky enough to gain a place at school are faced with the challenge of lack of space in crowded classrooms, a result of which is a high level of student attrition. Meanwhile, children with a disability encounter the most difficulties since they experience infrastructural challenges at schools. Furthermore, girls represent the lowest proportion of the school student population owing to the society’s stereotypical attitude towards girls’ education and those who are admitted generally drop out of the education system at an early stage of schooling in order to get married thus impeding their continuing education.
Recently, the Federal Government of Somalia (FGS) adopted its first unified curriculum and a standardized exam system for the country. However, the government faces a challenge in the implementation of these policies because certain Federal Member States (FMS) are not adhering to the standardized exam issued by Somalia’s Federal Ministry of Education.
Future Challenges
Somalia is facing a myriad of challenges from the regulation of its education system to the new curriculum and finance which are the direct result of protracted emergencies over the past two decades stemming from prolonged conflict, frequent drought and disastrous floods.
With only 22% of Somalia’s 30,000 teachers being certified, unqualified teachers without the necessary academic background and teaching skills are educating children who are already grappling with the psychological impacts of the long period of civil unrest in the country. However, since August 2017 the Global Campaign for Education has spent almost US$33 million to train primary and secondary school teachers in Somalia.
In 2020, the Federal Government of Somalia allocated a massive budget of $21 million to the education sector (compared to US$16 million in 2019.)
In October 2019, through the U.S. Agency for International Development USAID, the US Embassy in Mogadishu announced almost US$50 million in additional education funding to help the Somali people with the aim of increasing access to quality education and to support accelerated learning for out-of-school children and youth who have been persistently left behind.
Ama Baro (“Teach or Learn” in Somali) is a program that will be implemented over the next five years. This will play a pivotal role in accelerating alternative education, or the Accelerated Basic Education (ABE) education model, currently being run by certain international Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). This may improve access to quality education for children, particularly the pastoralists who account for almost 60% of Somalia’s population and who constantly move location in order to find pasture and water for their animals. Thus, the children of these marginalized communities are the most disadvantaged in terms of access to education.
Approximately, 16,760 students attended public schools in Mogadishu as of January 2019, distributed among the 24 public schools currently run by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Higher Education. However, thousands of students have not been enrolled due to Government’s limited capacity to offer places in schools.
The Ministry of Education, Culture and Higher Education (MOECHE) has developed its Education Sector Strategic Plan (ESSP, 2018-2020) which outlines its priorities to increase access to quality education for children and to equip youth with the skills and knowledge needed to contribute to the social, political and economic development of the country. However, with the lack of reliable data on children’s learning outcomes, a major challenge may be faced in terms of assessing the effectiveness of education at primary school level.
Some of the local teachers are reserved when asked about the Ministry’s strategies.
Farhan, a senior lecturer at Mogadishu University said: “Due to the limited capability and functionality of the Ministry, certainly many of these ambitious targets will not be achieved in their stated time-frame.”
Moreover, it will be challenging for the government to implement its education policies across the country as the federal nature of Somalia remains as yet undefined and the federal government’s relationship with some of its member states are at an impasse. Therefore, eliminating the various education curriculum adopted during the civil war will be a daunting task for the government. Also, without inadequate funding from the government, recruiting and training professional teachers and financing the infrastructural development of the schools will be difficult.
Currently, there are nearly 100 active and forecast funding opportunities for the organizations that work in the Somali educational sector. DevelopmentAid provides complete business intelligence data that is necessary for application to the opportunities and building reliable consortia.
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