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Source: Reuters

school.jpjSouthern Sudan, home to around 10 million people, had the world's lowest level of primary school enrolment until the peace deal prompted massive donor aid. The European Union, the United States and others poured money into the region to try to rebuild infrastructure devastated by five decades of war.

"(Some) 1.3 million pupils are expected to enter classes this year, compared to just 340,000 in 2005," the United Nations children agency (UNICEF) said in a statement. Around 2 million people died in the north-south war fought over ethnicity, religion and oil, with 4 million others displaced. The former rebel group which now runs the semi-autonomous southern government boosted enrolment by making primary education free, but the country still suffers from a lack of qualified teachers and school buildings. Many of the south's schools are no more than benches under trees and a 2006 UNICEF study showed only 16 percent of schools were housed in permanent buildings. Just over a third of the state's primary school pupils are girls, an achievement according to UNICEF compared with wartime when only one percent of female students would finish primary school. (Reporting by Skye Wheeler, Editing by Opheera McDoom and Chloe Fussell)