Sudan’s war has shut millions of children out of school. A generation is at risk
October 25, 2026 KHARTOUM) – When 16-year-old Samar packed her schoolbag in Khartoum in late April 2023, she expected to carry geography and history textbooks into her third year of high school. Instead, the bag held light clothes and a notebook she titled “Postponed Dreams”.
The crackle of gunfire near her home in old Omdurman set her family on a displacement journey across six Sudanese states and ended her education. Samar has not sat in a classroom since.
Samar is one of millions. Since war between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces erupted on April 15, 2023, Sudan’s public education system, already strained before the conflict, has collapsed to a degree U.N. agencies say is unmatched by any current education crisis worldwide.
Scale of the loss
The U.N. Sustainable Development Group said in October 2023 that Sudan stood on the brink of the world’s worst education crisis, with around 19 million children out of school, including seven million who were already out of school before the war.
In a September 2024 report, UNICEF said more than 17 million school-aged children remained out of school and that 90% of schools in most states were fully closed or only partially open in limited areas.
In a January 2026 report, Save the Children said Sudanese children had lost nearly 500 days of continuous learning—one of the longest school closures recorded globally, exceeding the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than eight million children no longer attend school, the charity said, with 55% of schools still closed and one in 10 school buildings converted into shelters for displaced people.
A February 2026 report by the Global Partnership for Education found that thousands of schools had been turned into military barracks, operational bases or shelters. In Darfur, it said, only 3% of schools remained open.
Teachers: the figures understate the damage
The Sudanese Teachers’ Committee, an independent labour body, said the official figures understate the damage.
In a Jan. 26, 2026 statement, the committee rejected any attempt to downplay the crisis and said the real number of children out of school exceeded eight million. It said the “500 days of interruption” metric hid the fact that entire states had seen no schooling since the war began, and that children who reached school age after April 2023 had nowhere to enrol.
Sudanese Certificate exam entries show the depth of the decline. Around 570,000 students sat the national school-leaving exam in 2023, before the war; in the war years, the figure fell to roughly 200,000 — more than 370,000 students deprived of the chance to sit the exam in a single year.
The teachers’ committee estimates that between 150,000 and 200,000 students, most of them girls, have been unable to take the exam for three consecutive years in Darfur, Blue Nile and the Kordofan states.
A split curriculum, a divided country
The war has also opened a political front in the schools.
For the first time in Sudan’s modern history, two separate sets of Sudanese Certificate exam results are being issued: one supervised by the central government’s Ministry of Education in areas under army control, another arranged in areas held by the RSF and their allies.
Education analysts warn that the parallel systems risk legitimising the de facto partition of Sudanese territory through curricula and examination authorities — a fragmentation that, even if the war ended tomorrow, could take years to undo.
Teachers unpaid, schools emptied
The teachers themselves are among the war’s overlooked casualties.
U.N. and teachers’ committee reports indicate that more than 50% of teachers have not received their regular salaries for at least a year. Thousands have joined the displaced population or taken other work, stripping the remaining public schools of qualified staff.
Sami al-Baqir, spokesperson for the Sudanese Teachers’ Committee, said unpaid entitlements and salaries covering only around 3% of a family’s monthly needs exposed the government’s inability to meet its obligations.
Al-Baqir told Sudan Tribune that despite multiple cabinet decisions and prime ministerial directives between 2016 and 2026, entitlements remained suspended or only partially implemented in several states.
The committee has set out its demands in a “Republican Palace” memorandum, including reform of the salary structure, a minimum wage of 500,000 Sudanese pounds and payment of all arrears. It is preparing for union escalation, including strikes, until the demands are met.
Education expert Elias Bassil said the crisis threatened an entire generation with the loss of its right to schooling, and called for flexible alternatives including temporary learning spaces in community centres and public buildings.
Teachers have staged repeated strikes, most recently this week, over unpaid salaries and working conditions.
What comes next
With the government unable to pay teachers or rebuild destroyed schools, access to education in Sudan is increasingly split along wealth and displacement lines. Children whose families can afford private alternatives, or who have relatives abroad, may still learn. Those in camps, in shelters and in RSF-held areas are largely on their own.
For Samar and her “Postponed Dreams” notebook, the question is whether any classroom will still be open by the time she, and the younger siblings of her generation, are too old to return.