After more than two decades of civil war, the Federal Government of Somalia was formed in 2012, and reconstructing the country’s education system became a national priority. Ministries of education were established across all Federal Member States, and decentralized offices at regional and district levels became functional.
However, the sector struggles with limited availability of system-level policy instruments, regulatory structures and implementation capacity, which hinders sustainable solutions to persistent challenges, namely low access to education. As of 2022, Somalia’s primary gross enrollment rate was 31%.
Somalia is working to dramatically increase access to education in an equitable and inclusive way and strengthen government capacity and ownership of the education sector.
As outlined in the 2023-2026 Partnership Compact, the Federal Government is committed to “creating conditions to enhance equitable access to quality and inclusive education in rural and urban areas”, with a focus on tackling existing supply and demand barriers within the education sector.
With GPE support, Somalia and partners are expanding access to primary school by constructing and rehabilitating public schools, ensuring that they are child-centered as well as disability and gender sensitive. Reducing financial barriers to education for the most marginalized children is expected to bring out-of-school children, especially girls, into school.
The government is increasing the number of trained teachers and providing more effective teaching and learning materials; and a strong regulatory and financing framework will increase system efficiency and effectiveness.
After Somaliland's self-declaration of independence, in 1991 it established its own government system and has managed to maintain reasonable peace and security in the last two decades. Nonetheless, Somaliland is negatively impacted by severe droughts, flooding and population movements.
Somaliland recognized the valuable role education plays through the Somaliland National Education Policy (2015-2030), from which three sector plans have been designed. Despite these efforts, many education sector outcomes are slow to improve. The primary school gross enrollment rate only increased from 31.5% in 2015 to 32% in 2020/21.
Somaliland relies significantly on external support from education stakeholders to complement the government's efforts. Somaliland's Partnership Compact is working towards "Improved Access to Quality Pre-primary and Primary Education for all" with an emphasis on improved learning outcomes and education systems strengthening.
With GPE support, Somaliland will continue to work on improving enrollment rates in primary school, increasing access and retention in communities affected by humanitarian crisis, and improving the pipeline from teacher recruitment to training, deployment and retention.
Somaliland will also focus on strengthening evidence generation and the government's gender unit to promote strategies for ensuring girls' access and retention to education.
