JOURNAL

REISMAN AND JANKE
According to the Teacher Education Strategy, overall policies and standards
for the teaching force were to be established and monitored by South Sudan’s
National Education Ministry. While many policies and standards are still pending,
those that have been approved were to be implemented by the state education
ministries. Each state was expected to do the following:
• Prepare budgets for teacher salaries and benefits, based on projected
demand (enrollments, new schools, pupil-teacher ratios, qualifications
structure)
• Apply educational and teacher standards when managing the teaching
staff
• Register, appoint, grade, post, supervise, support, and discipline the
teaching staff
• Ensure that teachers’ salaries and allowances are paid on time and
according to scale
• Assess and promote staff based on in-service training, performance, and
criteria specified by a teacher career ladder
• Monitor progress in meeting education-sector objectives for teachers in
each state (Hartwell 2012)
These expectations were unrealistic, given South Sudan’s poor teacher
training infrastructure, a lack of management skill at the central and state levels,
insufficient funding, and the dearth of existing or prospective teachers who met
the minimum education requirements. Not unsurprisingly, neither the National
Education Ministry nor the states met these expectations.
South Sudan’s General Education Bill, passed in 2012, represented an
important step forward in updating the strategy and clarifying basic elements of
the education system structure. However, the bill failed to adequately address a
number of critical areas of education policy, including teacher education. Several
policies were under development in late 2013 when South Sudan entered its latest
period of crisis, but due largely to a lack of technical capacity at the ministry and
infighting between ministry officials, there were few structured teacher education
policies in place as of 2014.
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Journal on Education in Emergencies