KHARTOUM – About 8 million children in Sudan have no access to any form of classroom learning, while the country’s humanitarian education response has received just 12.9% of the funding it requires, according to a nationwide assessment by CARE International.
The assessment paints a picture of an education system recovering unevenly from more than three years of war, with some schools reopening while millions of children remain excluded from learning and many functioning classrooms lack teachers, materials, water and sanitation.
CARE said broader estimates put the number of children whose education has been disrupted at between 19 million and 19.5 million.
The organization cautioned that the figures measure different aspects of the crisis. The approximately 8 million figure is the operational benchmark for children currently receiving no classroom education, while the larger estimates include children whose schooling has been disrupted more broadly.
CARE’s assessment covered all 18 states and combined a review of 72 documents with interviews with 33 education officials, aid organizations, teachers and other stakeholders.
It found that 12,243 of Sudan’s 19,883 schools had reopened, representing a significant improvement from earlier in the conflict.
But reopening rates vary dramatically across the country.
Only 3% of schools in North Darfur have reopened, while South Darfur stands at 13% and West Kordofan at 15%.
North Darfur has reopened just 33 of its 1,118 schools, despite having more than 1.1 million children in need of education assistance.
West Kordofan has the country’s highest proportion of school-age children outside education, with about 979,000 children — 88% of the state’s school-age population — out of school.
CARE said no education partner was recorded as operating in West Kordofan and no children had been reported reached by the formal humanitarian education response there.
South Darfur also has more than one million children out of school, while Khartoum has more than 833,000, according to the assessment.
Only 3.3% of Children in Need Reached
CARE said the Education Cluster estimates that $64.27 million is required for the humanitarian education response.
Only $8.3 million had been funded, equivalent to 12.9% of the requirement and leaving an 87% funding gap.
Thirty-four partners were implementing education activities across Sudan’s 18 states, but they had reached only about 342,000 children — 3.3% of the estimated 10.46 million children identified as needing education assistance.
The Federal Ministry of General Education separately estimates a funding gap of $284 million for the broader Transitional Education Plan, which covers needs beyond the humanitarian appeal.
CARE identified West Kordofan, North Darfur, South Darfur, East Darfur and North Kordofan as priority areas requiring the most urgent education interventions.
Children Have Lost Nearly 500 Days of Learning
The assessment said the average Sudanese child has lost nearly 500 days of education since the war began, creating learning gaps that cannot be addressed simply by reopening schools.
Many children have also aged beyond the grades they were attending before the conflict, increasing the need for accelerated learning and structured catch-up programmes.
Displacement has created a different problem in states where schools remained open.
In some receiving areas, classrooms designed for 70 to 80 pupils are now accommodating between 150 and 180 as displaced and returning families place additional pressure on education systems.
The assessment said 18% of schools nationally are also being used as shelters, reducing the number of buildings available for teaching.
Children face additional barriers including missing identity and school documents, transport costs, fees, insecurity, child labour and early marriage.
Teacher System Cannot Be Fully Counted
CARE said Sudan currently lacks a reliable national count of teachers.
Education Cluster data contain no current teacher headcount for any of the country’s 18 states, preventing authorities and aid organizations from calculating current pupil-to-teacher ratios.
A pre-war education plan recorded around 288,000 teachers in 2022-23, but displacement, unpaid salaries and departures from the profession have significantly altered the workforce.
Teacher pay emerged from CARE’s consultations as one of the main factors determining whether schools can remain functional.
The assessment also found severe gaps in teacher preparation and learning materials.
In East Darfur, 99% of assessed schools lacked appropriate teaching and learning materials, while 93% lacked teacher kits.
Only 7% of teachers had received early-grade training and 4% had psychosocial support training.
CARE said the destruction or loss of national printing capacity during the war had also made it more difficult to produce textbooks and other learning materials.
Water and Sanitation Response Barely Begun
Conditions inside reopened schools remain another major concern.
Education Cluster response data cited by CARE recorded drinking-water installations at only 202 schools, handwashing facilities at 55 and toilet installations at 22 out of nearly 20,000 schools nationwide.
CARE cautioned that these figures represent recorded humanitarian response outputs rather than a complete national count of existing facilities, meaning other services may not appear in the data.
Even so, the organization said they demonstrated how limited the current WASH response in schools remains.
School feeding has also largely collapsed in heavily affected areas.
An assessment of 91 schools in East Darfur found no school feeding programmes operating in any of them.
CARE said poor sanitation can have a particularly severe effect on girls, citing evidence showing that completion rates fall sharply where schools lack latrines.
The organization recommended restoring teacher payments, expanding school water and sanitation services, establishing community and accelerated learning programmes in areas where the school network has collapsed and linking cash assistance to education for vulnerable households.
It said improving education access would require more than reopening buildings, warning that schools without teachers, learning materials, water, sanitation and protection services cannot provide meaningful education.
