Teacher education in South Sudan with emphasis on foundational literacy and numeracy skills

This report presents a case study of teacher training development over the last ten years within the context of a country in crises and an education system put under strain as a result of the long war for independence followed by internal struggles both of which undermined the education system and, in particular, damaged the opportunities for the teaching force to develop. It reports on the shortage of teachers and that a majority of those teaching are untrained, underpaid and unaware of recent approaches to developing foundation skills in children. It outlines the key innovations introduced by the Government, in particular a new Curriculum for schools and a new program with a revised curriculum for training teachers, both in the early stages of implementation and examines their potential for tackling the bottleneck represented by the lack of trained teachers. The paper then draws on the experiences of Windle Trust International (WTI) in supporting language and teacher education in South Sudan and then concludes by making recommendations on the way forward. It concludes that the Ministry now has systems in place but, without outside support, lacks the means to implement.