Governance, Decentralization and Service Delivery: Education sector in Southern Sudan

1. Governance, Decentralization and Service Delivery:Education sector in Southern Sudan Government of Southern Sudan Paris, 10 March 2006 Break out Session 11:30 – 1:00

2. Context and Strategic opportunities • CPA, INC and ICSS: provide a framework • Decentralization allows for equitable resource allocation; locally-relevant interventions; targeted efforts to reduce disparities; • Improved security: allows expanded educational access,return and reintegration of IDPs; • Increased budget allocations, partnerships and donor support (Allocation of $140 million by GOSS): allows scaling up of educational programmes; • MDTFs and ERDF: Support sector-wide approaches

3. Commitment to Decentralization • Functions to be allocated on the principle of subsidiarity: • GOSS: Mainly Policy, Standards, Financing, Monitoring and Capacity Building • States: Mainly Policy Implementation, Regulation, Financing, Technical Assistance, Training and Monitoring and Evaluation • Counties: Mainly Provision (See Annex slides for details) • Transition Arrangements: During the transition, the GOSS will be performing functions that will subsequently be transferred

4. Strategic Framework • Design and finalize the decentralization framework, including the guidelines/criteria for resource allocation; • Enact relevant legislation, as required; • Establish mechanisms to monitor disbursements and utilization of funds; • Capacity development of states and county-level staff; • Creation of educational administration structures.

5. Delivery of educational services : Thrust Areas • Build state/county-level capacity to manage education; • Enhancing educational access; • Improve gender equity; • Improve quality of education; • Expand teacher training (pre-service and in-service); • Expandsecondary education and strengthen tertiary education

6. Priority actions for Building state/county-level capacity to manage education • Revise education policy for consistency with CPA, INC and ICSS; • Establish County Education Offices; • Establish an administrative structure linking levels • Create a pool of trained personnel; • Develop community-school partnerships; • Set up a functional EMIS/simple mechanism for monitoring learning.

7. Priority actions for enhancing educational access • Commitment to Free Basic Education • Go-to-School initiative to be launched on April 1 2006; • Expand educational facilities in places of arrival of returning IDPs and refugees; • Undertake a comprehensive mapping of services; • Construct classrooms/learning spaces with focus on underserved areas; • Develop alternative learning programmes for out-of-school adolescents, demobilised children and young adults; • Provide educational materials to enrolled pupils; • Expansion of school feeding programme; • Develop state/county-specific plans.

8. Priority actions for Improving gender equity • Increase the number of village schools for girls; • Introduce accelerated learning programmes for out-of-school adolescent girls; • Community mobilisation to remove the cultural and social obstacles which prevent girls from participating in education; • Multi-sector approach involving the provision of water supply facilities and gender-segregated toilet facilities and “comfort kits” to girls in schools.

9. Priority actions for improving educational quality - I CURRICULUM RENEWAL AND TEXTBOOKS PRODUCTION • Train staff of curriculum development centre; • Renew basic education curriculum to : • Develop framework for primary and secondary education; • Make learning content contextually and culturally relevant; • create a culture of peace and tolerance; respect for human rights and ethnic diversities; environmental awareness, hygiene education, and gender issues; • incorporate life-skills education with focus to promote HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention. • Increase textbook production • Mother tongue as medium of instruction in the early years of primary education : national conference to be held in 2006 to address language issues.

10. Priority actions for improving educational quality - II IMPROVING LEARNING ENVIRONMENT • Create a protective/safe learning environment • Ensure the availability for basic teaching-learning supplies for teachers and pupils. IMPROVING TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS • Set up a network of teacher training centres to train in-service teachers. • Increase number of teachers to keep pace with planned increase in enrolment. IMPROVING LEARNING ASSESSMENT • Establish an examination and certification authority; • Set a mechanism to monitor learning achievement. EXPAND TEACHER TRAINING

11. Priority Actions - Strengthening secondary and tertiary education • Establishment of additional secondary schools and training of teachers; • Increasing tertiary institutions to meet the urgent need for qualified work force; • Transfer of three universities from Khartoum to Southern Sudan (Juba, Malakal and Wau); • Training of staff of tertiary institutions and universities; • Establish vocational training facilities.

12. Continuing challenges • Capacity constraints to expanding access • Lack of institutional, organizational and human resource capacity at all levels of government • Limited qualified human resources – the lack of trained educational planners/administrators, head-teachers, teachers etc. • Inadequate equipment, transportation facilities • Low funds absorption capacity

13. Annex Slides

14. Institutional Framework for Decentralization of educational administration: GOSS Functions • Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MoEST), GoSS : • Policy development; • Capacity building; • Standard setting; • Quality assurance; • Technical support to states; • Monitoring and evaluation; • Equitable allocation of resources; and • E Management Information System.

15. Institutional Framework for Decentralization of educational administration: State Functions • State Ministry: • Policy implementation; • State-level planning; • capacity building at county level; • Equitable allocation of resources among counties; • Technical support to counties; • Monitoring and evaluation; • Teacher training

16. Institutional Framework for Decentralization of educational administration: Sub-state Functions • Sub-state: • County-level planning; • Delivery and management of educational services; • Facility expansion; • Supervision of educational services; • Promotion of school-community partnerships that improve school governance.