Sudan

In the context of a historical, traditional religious education, graduates of Quranic schools went on to an Ilm school of higher learning where they would study a range of Islamic subjects relating to literature, theology, and law. Tafsir, the study of Quranic exegesis, passed along the traditions for interpreting the sacred text of the Quran. Literature studies centered mainly on the texts resulting from scholarly commentary on the Quran, and the study of the hadith focused on the traditions surrounding the life of the Prophet Mohammed. Traditions governing marriage, divorce, inheritance, and personal conduct are derived from how the Prophet himself had behaved and conducted himself in his lifetime, but a modern application and interpretation of these traditions is necessary for use in Islamic societies of today.

Fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence, is the body of theory surrounding the Islamic sacred law (Shari'a) that orthodox Muslims believe to be applicable not only to Muslims, but to all men and women. The various subjects of the Ilm schools, fiqh, hadith, tafsir, madih (praises to the Prophet Mohammed), sira (prose and poetic verse narrating stories of the Prophet), and Wa'z (literature discussing Islamic notions of paradise and hell) completed the socialization process of students into the Islamic scholarly community. Students went on after graduating from the Ilm schools for further specializations in fiqh or hadith, for example at the world famous Al Azhar university in Egypt, or they went on to serve as prayer leaders (imams), or judges (qadi) in their respective Islamic communities.

Understanding the influence of traditional religious education in the Islamic world is very significant in explaining the development of the modern Sudanese educational infrastructure. As for many citizens in countries of Africa, Islam represented for the Sudanese the ideology needed for development and nationalization in the postcolonial, postimperial era. In Africa, leaders saw the need for strengthening the moral character of their people, and Islam provided a sense of community (Umma), society, and dignity in resisting the imperialists. Islam provided an identity amid the sweeping changes affecting their countries.

The early to mid-1900s was a time when Arab nationalism was sweeping the Islamic world, and Sudan was not the only country, or the first, to address the challenge of how to best nationalize and develop a system of education that would meet the needs of a generally uneducated, illiterate populace. In Sudan, an educated elite had already developed a vision for such development, and that vision led from the logic of nationalism and independence to the mass education of the entire populace. This was one of the first tasks of primary importance to the national government. But there were problems such as a large population, about 10 million at the time of Sudan's independence, and an ever-increasing population that equated with a need for building an educational system to accommodate not only the unschooled students, but also the steadily increasing number of school-age children who needed to be enrolled in the state schools.

The result of the fast-paced development meant that schools were opened with large class sizes. Teachers often lacked professional qualifications and training, and the level of education was not adequate, especially at the secondary level, and students were nominally equipped for further studies. As in the Condominium era, education focused on preparation for government service instead of vocational and technical training, a repetition of problems inherent in the Condominium era educational policy. Independence in Sudan was not the result of a revolution per se, but a transfer of administrative control to the nationalists.

The schools that were inherited from the Anglo-Egyptian administration were nationalized under the unified educational system and brought under the control of the state. In the South the subsidized missionary schools came under scrutiny after independence. A report in 1954 by an International Commission on Secondary Education had advocated transfer of missionary schools to government control and replacement of English with Arabic as the language of instruction. Such insensitivity to the southern dilemma went even further when in 1957, a year after formal independence, the government proclaimed its decision to nationalize the mission schools. They were integrated into the national education system shortly thereafter. More forceful measures were later taken with the aggressive policies surrounding Arabization and Islamization, and six intermediate Islamic institutes were opened in the South, new mosques were built, and Christian missionaries were not allowed to open any more schools. Furthermore, Sunday as a day of rest was done away with in favor of the Islamic juma'a, the Friday day of Muslim worship.

The Islamic traditional schools and religious institutes in the North were also incorporated into the state system of education, but they were never harassed as the mission schools in the South have been since independence. And although the integrated missionary schools have been allowed to continue up to the present day, the increase of restrictions since the Missionary Societies Act of 1962 has resulted in continued interference and disruption over the years to missionary activities; and there has been outright hostility as in the expulsion of missionaries, and most recently in the bombing of the Comboni Primary School and the bulldozing of mission schools. In line with other Arab countries, the Sudan instituted a policy of Arabizing the schools that presented problems for the southerners who had been taught until then in an English medium of instruction environment. There was, therefore, no Arab-educated elite in the South as there was in the North to institute such a policy of Arabization.

Modern Sudanese education at the secondary level has inherited a system of education that incorporated Islamic schools and Islamic subjects, and the English medium missionary schools of the South, into a centrally controlled national educational infrastructure—that has evolved into a modern system of imparting the previous elements of a traditional religious education, and also the so-called secular subjects requisite for a liberal education in the humanities, arts, and sciences.

The success of the system in passing along the Islamic traditions is fairly obvious, at least in the northern regions. But the failure to unify the country, and the alienation, polarization, and enmity resulting from the programs of enforced Arabization and Islamization of the southern regions especially, can only be seen as dismal failures to accommodate the needs of important elements of postindependence Sudanese society. And this failure has had ramifications for the educational system as a whole, economically, socially, ideologically, and psychologically. Funds have been diverted for the war effort. Transportation from rural areas to schools has been disrupted. And education has been used in the recruitment of youths for the war effort against parents' knowledge and wishes in many cases. The government has even gone so far as rounding up youths off the streets for conscription into military service, and they have withheld the secondary school educational certificates of Sudanese youth who did not enlist for service in the southern jihad. Factionalization and fracturing of diverse societal components against each other in fratricidal slaughter represent symptoms of the graver problems underlying the obvious deficiencies in modern Sudan's educational policy.

The meager statistics for school enrollment at the secondary level reveal the modern failures of the educational system in Sudan to provide a basic foundational level of schooling to the Sudanese populace. In 2000, only 401,424 students were enrolled in secondary schools out of 2.22 million eligible students. The financial constraints in the midst of warfare have meant that students must pay fees to support teachers who should have been salaried by the state, and the financial plight of teachers is only aggravated by the absence of school equipment, supplies, and adequate facilities.