Post-war Sudan (3): Education Reconstruction

By: Al-Sawi Youssuf

The development and growth of any country depends on education, above all else. The role of education is becoming increasingly important in light of the rapid developments the world is witnessing in various fields, especially the technological and scientific fields. These fields form the backbone of the modern economy, and directly affect business growth and prosperity. The renaissance of education is an indispensable necessity, especially in the field of technological and scientific education. Through it, we can prepare a generation of qualified and creative youth, capable of keeping pace with global developments and leading the process of reconstruction and development in our country.
To reform and develop education, we first need the students to return to their schools and resume what was interrupted in the educational process. Regularity in study is the most important requirement, according to pre-determined, known and fixed times and dates. Besides providing the premises (classrooms), the textbook, seating, and other aids and means, the most important element of education is the qualified teacher. The teacher is the foundation of the entire process, and a capable teacher can provide students with a good education even without the presence of buildings, books, and tools, as is the case in most of our schools in the countryside and nomadic schools, in which students receive their lessons in the shade of a tree or under an open pergola made of straw and firewood! Dear reader, you will find interesting stories about these schools in Hassan Najila’s book, “My Memoirs in the Desert.” Caring for a teacher includes selecting him upon appointment, examining his qualifications not only academically but also personally and psychologically, his innate talents, aptitude and inclinations, training and qualifying him, following up his professional development and evaluating his skills that he acquires through experience, practice, contact, and in-service training.

After the teacher, we need to review the curricula, courses, and the educational ladder itself. It does not matter much if the educational scale is 6-3-3, 4-4-4, or 8-4. What matters is the number of years of study and the length of the academic year. I wish we could abandon the “pity” that at one time made us the only country in the world in which the years of education were only 11 instead of 12 or more. I wish we could, on the contrary, learn from European countries (Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium, for example) that have a basic stage of 8 years, then a secondary stage of multiple lengths. The “general” secondary stage is 4 years long, and compulsory education ends, and the student who leaves school after this stage can either enter the labor market as an unskilled worker, or joining craft institutes and community colleges, which qualify students within two years in fields such as buildings, carpentry, blacksmithing, electricity, refrigeration and air conditioning, auto mechanics, plumbing, bookkeeping (clerks), secretarial, and others. As for the student who continues to the fifth year, which is called “higher” secondary school, he is then qualified to enter higher institutes (technical and technological institutes), which qualify technical engineers in various fields of engineering, construction, computers, accounting, management, and business. They are similar to the Institute of Technological Colleges we previously had, which is in Germany. The Netherlands has many more universities, and about 35 to 40 percent of students enter it, while only about 5 to 10 percent enter universities. Then there is the final track, which is the “scientific” secondary school, which continues until the sixth year, after which students are qualified to enter universities to study law, economics, engineering, medicine, and others. This is similar to the British system, where the general certificate (GCSE-O-level) does not qualify for admission to universities, and an additional year in “college” is required to obtain what is known as (A-level) for those who wish to compete for university admission.
Here in Sudan, due to the large shortage of qualified teachers, especially in very important fields such as mathematics, English, and science, in addition to the shortage of books and the disruption of the school year, we urgently need to increase the years of secondary school, so that the level of students improves when they graduate from it, and they become more qualified to study higher education in universities and institutes. University professors have often complained about the low level of general education students, which makes them suffer greatly during their university years, and many of them are unable to continue despite their high grades in the secondary school certificate.
As for the curricula, they need to be developed, revised, and amended, not to delete Surat Al-Zalzalah as some extremists were trying, but to keep pace with scientific development in the world and the needs of students in this era, whether to prepare them for university studies, the labor market, or their normal daily lives, such as using various computer images (tablet), smartphone, computer, and other smart and office devices). Therefore, education and curriculum experts must devote themselves, in the form of specialized committees and workshops, and in accordance with overall guidelines agreed upon in national conferences, to developing educational curricula, especially in the fields of mathematics, science, English, technology, and computers, which are the areas that should be focused on to a large extent at all levels including kindergarten and junior high school levels. Attention must also be given to the human sciences and basic knowledge in the fields of economics, management, and sociology, in addition to the art such as drawing, photography, music, theater, and video, as all young people now use their phones for photography and video. Linguistic and environmental diversity must be taken into account, so that the curricula allow the use of local languages in the first years of study, as in the experience of Eritrea, which allows the use of the languages of its nine nationalities in the first four years of study, before moving to study in Tigrinya and English for the rest of the years. Some modification and amendments may be permitted in the curricula at the regional or state level, in order to suit the local environment, language, and culture.
There are many challenges that will face the development of education. In addition to the scarcity of money and the lack of resources available to spend on education, especially in the field of construction and buildings, book printing, providing seating, accommodating a sufficient number of qualified teachers, and spending on their training, among the major challenges that will face the process are instability, where the protest mentality prevails among small political forces, which resort to using children as weapons in their battle with the state, so they stop studying, strike, sit-in, demonstrate, burn tires, close roads, break down schools, and beat teachers, so the authorities are forced to close schools and stop studying for long periods deducted from the academic year calendar, which is specified by courses, classes, and subjects. Among the challenges is also the political forces’ use of the teacher as a Trojan horse to achieve their agendas in opposition to the state, and exploiting, stealing and kidnapping the large union body of teachers, who are the largest category of workers in the public service, under fictitious names such as the “Teachers’ Committee” and others to announce comprehensive and extended strikes with impossible political demands. Another challenge is political interference in determining the educational ladder, curricula, and courses, which should be completely kept away from the game of politics and nihilistic conflicts, which destroyed the country, disrupted renaissance and development, and led us to war and comprehensive turmoil.
In conclusion, we conclude with the steps required to improve the quality of public education and develop it, the most important of which is holding an urgent conference with the participation of specialists in the fields of education, sociology, economics, and law, and community representatives, including parents, teachers, students, clergy, administration, and leaders of public work and civil society, in order to develop general guidelines about the development of education, especially with regard to the educational ladder and curricula, and the overall goals of the educational process: which is to graduate a cadre capable of independent, creative thinking, and to fill the jobs of the future anywhere in the world as well as setting guidelines on the role of the public and private sectors in education. This is followed by the formation of specialized committees to develop curricula, develop courses, and draw a road map for the advancement of education, which includes giving priority to scientific subjects, mathematics, the English language, and teacher training curricula, as well as the conditions for his/her admission into the College of Education and then into the profession. The best proposal is to set a minimum threshold for admission to colleges of education that is not less than about 75 percent, knowing that the teacher’s profession is much more dangerous than the profession of medicine and engineering, for which we usually set a minimum, and for which there is increased competition. This, of course, requires making the profession attractive and its allocations among the highest in the public service.
As for higher education, although universities are completely independent institutions by virtue of their laws, we can, through the National Council for Higher Education, or any other coordinating body, bring about an important shift that is needed, which is the move towards technical and vocational education, to graduate cadres with a high level of qualification, in fields such as nursing and other auxiliary medical professions, computers and programming, engineering in its various specializations, design, applications of artificial intelligence, physics and chemistry, languages especially English, various specializations in science and technology, and other requirements of global and local labor markets, those abbreviated as (STEM).
Let us always remember that education is a shared responsibility between everyone, government, society and individuals. Therefore, we need to spread awareness of the value of technical, vocational, and technological education, and of the requirements of the future labor market, to change the beliefs of some families who see education as nothing other than the university, and who see the university as nothing but the faculty of medicine. Moving from the “pride” mentality and looking at education as a certificate or a folded paper that the student hangs in his home, then remaining unemployed because his education is not suitable for the market, and changing it to a practical and pragmatic mentality that directs every student to the course that suits his abilities, desires and the labor market, and focuses on openness to the whole world and its interaction with its developments and demands in this era of rapid pace and rapid change. Filipinos working abroad transferred about 34 and a half billion dollars to their country last year, while remittances from Egyptians amounted to about 22 billion, and Indians transferred 125 billion dollars to their country.