Learning through crisis: Community-based education in Sudan

Amid conflict and state collapse, communities are driving efforts to support education continuity through both formal and non-formal systems. Despite the importance of community-driven education efforts, there is limited information on how communities are supporting local education systems and how these community-driven initiatives are financed including at the household and community level. Further, there is little evidence related to how these hyper-local financing arrangements shape who can access schooling, the quality of learning, and the continuity of education amidst conflict.

Several factors underscore the need for this analysis: (1) The collapse of public education financing and its implications for the growing role of community-driven initiatives and religiously affiliated education provision in maintaining access to learning amid conflict; (2) The lack of systematic evidence on how community-driven initiatives are financed, governed and sustained; (3) The demand from national and international stakeholders for research to understand these systems better as a first step so that considerations can be made on how to potentially support these systems in ways that promote equity, learning and continuity of education in Sudan.

The purpose of addressing this evidence gap is to shed light on how best to provide external or state support that safeguards and expands education access and quality particularly for groups of children who are not reached by the formal system.