Modern Schooling Loses its Foothold in a Land that Birthed Civilization

Although the land known today as Yemen cradled some of the world’s first civilizations, only the most recent generations of Yemenis have had widespread access to formal schooling. For millennia, most of the population settling Yemen’s rugged highlands and secluded wadis gained knowledge through oral storytelling, poetry, and proverbs, while scholarly pursuits were accessible to only about 10 percent of male school-aged children. This privileged group consisted mostly of the sons of senior religious clerics, bureaucratic figures, or wealthy merchants, and from the 7^th Century through the early 20^th Century Islamic knowledge—and by extension linguistic and calligraphic skills—were valued at the expense of all others. Most students set about memorizing the Qur’an by heart, a task that required about nine years of study, while they also learned the sayings and examples of the prophet Muhammad and read debates by scholars on Islamic philosophy and jurisprudence.[1]

Approaching the middle of the 20^th century, the Imam then ruling Yemen’s north finally formed a small number of secular schools with specific purposes, such as training clerks for the judicial system, as well as a teacher’s college and a military school. Additionally, a few intellectual pioneers also sought to establish modern schools around this time—such as Ahmad Nu’man who established a secular school in the 1930s near the city of Taiz that taught subjects such as mathematics, geography, and physical education. Unfortunately, many Yemenis saw his school as un-Islamic and counterproductive to the moral development of young people and the Imam opposed the school, placing Nu’man under house arrest. Although the school closed when the students subsequently scattered in fear, Numan’s effort still emboldened others to follow in his footsteps and by the 1950s a few modern schools existed in the northern cities of Taiz, Hodeidah, and Sana’a, where a small number of Egyptian educators came to teach at the request of reformist Yemeni officials.[2]

Meanwhile, in southern Yemen, formal, secular schooling had emerged a century earlier than in the north under British colonial rule that began in 1839. Yemen’s southern colonial schools were influenced by Indian and British education systems, and included mission schools, technical schools, and teacher training institutes. Thus, by the early 20^th century, Aden—the capital of the British Protectorate—boasted some of the best Western-oriented educational models in the Arabian Peninsula, featuring teachers from Egypt, Sudan, and India. However, despite its quality, the system was built for the benefit of expatriates from both Britain and India and only benefited Yemenis living in the port city tangentially. Thus, in the 1930s there were fewer than 1,500 students total enrolled the protectorate’s public schools, with another 2,000 or fewer learning in private education or tutoring.[3]

Thus, across Yemen, a secular education remained available only to elite groups of urban students until 1962, when a Republican revolution deposed the Imam ruling Yemen’s north. The imamate was replaced by the Republic of Yemen (RoY), a military regime that sought to establish a modern school system throughout its territory at long last. Egypt sent thousands of teachers to help the new republic establish this system, which included a Ministry of Education that oversaw the spread of public schools to rural areas of the north for the first time. The schools taught mathematics, English, and social and natural sciences, and schools for girls were even established in the major cities of Sana’a, Taiz, and Al Baydha. Egyptian educators functioned as the backbone of these emerging school networks for more than a decade, teaching key subjects, training Yemeni teachers, and assisting with establishing school administration systems. During this period, the textbooks used in north Yemen were either Egyptian imports or adaptations, thus Egyptian Arabic-language norms heavily influenced Yemeni school culture. Meanwhile, libraries were also established and expanded in the north, and an informal education sector emerged as well, teaching trades, basic literacy, clerical, administrative, and managerial skills. Still, this fledgling education system had only minimal financing and was heavily reliant on external aid. Further, although many students started a formal education, few completed primary school and even fewer completed secondary school, thus illiteracy remained high.[4]

Five years after northern Yemenis deposed their Imam, southern Yemenis expelled the British in 1967, and education expanded there, too, under the socialist state that followed. The Marxist-Leninist People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) implemented universal and compulsory education policies in its territories and also Arabized its education system. However, the new state was forced to continue relying on teachers from Egypt and other Arab countries since the colonial education system that had preceded it had not invested in training Yemeni educators and many schools in Aden and Mukalla were staffed predominately by Egyptians through the 1980s. Meanwhile, under the PDRY, education was not only tuition free, children were also given free textbooks and transport, and in rural areas without a school, students were given free board in order to attend an urban school. Further, at the university level, students were also given a monthly stipend equivalent to about half the average salary. Girls’ education was strongly promoted in the south, and the south also sought to increase adult literacy more aggressively than the RoY to the north. For example, in 1985, the PDRY extended its typical three-month summer break to six months and offered all adult men and women throughout their territories a chance to have basic language and literacy training during that time, as well as basic education in other areas such as mathematics.[5]

In 1990, when the PDRY and the RoY united to form a single republic and the northern and southern education systems merged, poor infrastructure and rapid population growth led to overcrowding in most schools and rural-urban disparities persisted nationwide. In this context, which was also characterized by low government funding, high dropout rates, and regional inequality, a young teacher named Amgad began a career that has now spanned 30 years at a local school in a rural district of Yemen’s Taiz province. Children who studied in Amgad’s village classroom in the 1990s, now adults, still remember the devotion with which he delivered their lessons. Back then, his monthly salary was just enough to survive on, but by scrimping, he was able to build a modest home. He added to the humble structure little by little over the years, and his family still resides there today.

Sadly, when Yemen’s current conflict started in 2015, and the local currency collapsed, Amgad’s salary lost over 92 percent of its value as prices skyrocketed. Through the decade of conflict that has followed, Amgad’s salary has often gone unpaid for months, and he has had to stop buying the medicine that he needs for his chronic illness. During that time, Amgad also watched his own children graduate, first from high school, and then from college. However, his oldest children found no employment even with their university degrees, and his younger children abandoned their studies when they could no longer afford the tuition. Now, despite his decades of investment in Yemen’s human capital, Amgad’s household depends on a food basket they receive periodically from a local Yemeni non-profit to fill their stomachs—and they consider themselves fortunate as many teachers across Yemen have not experienced such support to help them stave off deepening despair. For example, in late 2025, a longtime educator and lecturer at Hodeidah University died of a heart attack after learning that authorities in the province had determined he was “unneeded” and removed his name from the payroll list, depriving him of the remainder of his salary, which had long since been cut in half. Sources close to his family said his death was directly linked to the psychological impact of the decision, which has left thousands of teachers in Hodeidah facing similar financial ruin.[6]

Furthermore, in Yemen’s conflict context, many teachers who still have jobs report being forced to attend ideological training sessions and incorporate political messaging into daily lessons. Mathematics problems reference military victories, history lessons glorify armed resistance, and religious studies are co-opted to align with sectarian ideologies. Recently, a 40-year-old schoolteacher explained to Reuters how a school supervisor suspended him from his teaching job for refusing to attend indoctrination sessions, forcing him to flee to another part of the country and live in displacement. Meanwhile, teachers who sideline sectarian narratives in their classrooms risk more than the loss of their jobs. For example, in Ibb province, human rights organizations and local activists reported the enforced disappearance of 67 educational professionals over a nine-month period in 2025. Teachers, school administrators, and education ministry employees have all been taken from their homes or workplaces by militias without legal warrants or formal charges, and their whereabouts remain unknown. Still, for many teachers, these risks are worth it when they look into their students’ faces that carry what Yemeni journalist Murad Abdo has described as “the stubborn brightness children often hold even as the world around them unravels.”[7]

According to Abdo, tens of thousands of children across Yemen now study in tents, straw huts, under trees, or beside piles of rubble that serve both as playgrounds and as reminders of what has been lost. Moreover, where classrooms still stand, teachers who can no longer afford the cost of daily transportation sleep in the classroom during the week while local families take turns cooking for them and pooling small sums to cover their basic needs. Still others skip breakfast to pay for transportation and arrive with empty stomachs. “They take attendance, start their lessons, and carry on as if nothing is wrong,” a community activist told Abdo of hungry teachers in Ad Dhale province in November 2025. “Their commitment outshines the crisis around them.”[8]

In 2026, three civilian teachers in Al Mahwit province have already been abducted and sentenced to death in a continued targeting of educators that reflects an ongoing strategy by sectarian militias to suppress dissent and control ideological narratives within schools and mosques. Meanwhile, rights advocates are warning that continued repression of this nature could deepen sectarian divides and undermine prospects for peace and reconciliation. In this context, despite the best efforts of Yemen’s tenacious teachers, half a century of hard-won gains in increasing access to education nationwide continues to erode. Thus the descendants of peoples that gave rise to the dawn of civilization, and later exported the coffee that some claim helped to fuel the emergence of the modern age, continue to have some of the least access to studying that history and contributing to preserving, cultivating, sharing, and expanding Yemen’s knowledge reserves.[9]