‘I Like My Job Too Much’: Unpaid Teachers Fight to Save a Nation’s Schools

South Sudan is the world’s newest nation and its education system is on the verge of collapse, putting an entire generation at risk.

At first glance, the work life of Paul Santino, the headmaster of a school here in South Sudan, resembles that of many educators.

He sits alone at a dark wooden desk in a room lined with books. Students and staff knock politely before entering. Every so often he makes his rounds, poking his head into classrooms, overseeing goings on around the schoolyard, chiding students for their uniform or behavior.

But unlike most educators, Mr. Santino has not received a salary in more than a year, nor has any of the staff at the Gumbo Basic School in Juba, the capital, nor any other teachers in the country.

Education in South Sudan is in crisis.

The country, founded in 2011 after an independence war that lasted decades, is one of the most fragile in Africa. Its public coffers are nearly empty. Around half of the population is 18 or under, but for years education has rated little more than a rounding error in the government’s budget, forcing the country’s schools to the brink.

That could spell disaster for the world’s newest nation. Education is vital for Africa to unleash the economic potential of its demographic boom, but South Sudan, a country of 12 million, points to what could happen if schools fail. Only 40 percent of primary school aged children are enrolled and only a tiny fraction of those attain benchmarks for literacy and numeracy, according to United Nations data.

Plummeting attention from donors, including the United States, has left schools like Gumbo running on fumes. That schools continue to function in South Sudan comes down to the commitment of educators like Mr. Santino, 67.

“I like my job too much,” he said when asked why he bothered to come to work everyday without being paid. In the absence of a government salary, he has cut costs to support his wife and six children, he said. Parents also provide small stipends to the school when they can.

Each morning, Mr. Santino walks four miles to school around dawn. After locking up every evening, he walks home. “Young people are the future of South Sudan,” he said.

The state of the schools in South Sudan has sparked a debate over whether donor funding has helped or hindered the country’s education system. The Trump administration argues that external funding has enabled South Sudan’s leaders to neglect making education a priority for its people.

“The dire state of education in South Sudan is not a donor resource problem,” the State Department said in a statement, blaming instead a failure by the government to use public resources to fund basic services.

The country’s leaders have siphoned billions of dollars in oil revenue that could have gone to education, the statement continued, adding that South Sudan had treated foreign assistance as a “substitute for governance.”

South Sudan’s Information Minister, Ateny Wek Ateny, did not immediately respond to the criticism, but said that, while aid cuts had hit the country hard, teachers had displayed national pride by continuing in their jobs in the absence of pay. “There’s nothing South Sudan can do except to rely on its own, so that it can continue to exist,” he said.

The Gumbo school has some advantages over others in the country. At lunchtime, children line up for a hot meal cooked on site. Parents provide the teachers with the small stipends that help keep the school afloat.

- Author: Matthew Mpoke Bigg, The New York Times

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