Education system “paralysed”

More than 50 percent of children of school age are still outside the system, and the quality of education has seriously declined in the Congo as a result of the civil war, UNICEF’s report stated. Most schools were in a state of poor basic hygiene and sanitation, and education as a whole was “seriously paralysed”, it said. However there remained two comparative advantages on which the agency could capitalise to rehabilitate the school system. First, there still existed parents’ associations that played an active role in sustaining education activities and, secondly, the NGO sector was strongly cooperative.

UNICEF’s approach, it added, would be to focus on basic education, providing such essentials as desks, notebooks, pens, chalk and learning kits for teachers and pupils returning to schools. It would later use this as an entry point to introduce the rehabilitation of school buildings, revolving funds for materials, school gardening and hygiene promotion in the community, peace education and child rights protection.