The Ministry of General Education and partners have launched a framework that aims at providing a sound direction to all education stakeholders on how to overcome barriers to girls’ education.

The National Girls’ Education Strategy 2018-2022 was launched on Wednesday under the theme: “Creating a conducive and safe environment for girl’s education”.

The plan outlines barriers to girls’ education in three categories; Household and community level barriers, school-based barriers and policy and system level barriers.

According to the Minister of General Education and Instruction, cultural practices, conflict and poverty, which are under household and community level barriers, still remain major obstacles to girls’ education.

“In our society many only take boys to school and the girls are not taken to school. We know over 1.8 million children are out of school based on the study we did together with UNICEF in 2013,” said Deng Deng Hoc.

“They are mainly in the former states of Eastern Equatoria, Warap, Northern Bar el Ghazal, Lakes Unity and Jonglei.”

Among school-based barriers to girls’ education are high turnover of teachers, curriculum and language instruction and destruction of learning spaces and occupation of schools by armed groups.

For policy and system level barriers, lack of affirmative action for female teachers has been outlined.

The girls’ education framework also gives seven strategic directions to the barriers to girls’ education.

They include strengthening governance of complementary education programs and sector, policy development and strengthening of legal framework and improving access to learning outcomes in primary and secondary schools.

Others are improvement of child-friendly schools, professional development of teachers and school managers, build effective education partnerships and coordination and community behavioral change and public communications.

“We are expecting some $1.9 billion to come from China, $300 million has already been allocated by the cabinet,” said Mr Deng.

“The UK government has allocated 70 million sterling pounds for phase two of the Girls’ Education South Sudan program and this money will be enough to fund intervention for the next five years.”

This money, according to him, will be used to build more schools and improve the education system that will be conducive for girls’ education.

The Ministry of Education and its partners also developed an implementation toolkit for the plan.