Tunisia is a North African country bordered by Algeria, Libya and the Mediterranean Sea, with an estimated population of around 12.1 million. Arabic is the official language, while French remains influential in higher education, business and parts of public life. Since independence in 1956, Tunisia has treated education as critical to modernization, but the current challenge is no longer just expanding access. It’s improving learning outcomes, reducing dropout and helping graduates find work.

Eight Facts about Education in Tunisia

1. Tunisia’s education system includes basic, secondary and higher education. Compulsory education lasts from roughly ages 6 to 16, reflecting reforms that broadened basic education and made schooling a national priority. Although World Bank/UNESCO data continue to list Tunisia’s compulsory education duration as a core national indicator, education sector partners describe the country as still pursuing reforms in this space.
   
   
2. One of the most important recent developments is the approval of Tunisia’s Education Sector Strategic Plan 2025-2035. UNICEF says the plan is intended to strengthen both equity and quality, two areas that increasingly define the country’s education debate. In 2024, UNICEF also reported that Tunisia’s national school dropout prevention program directly supported more than 300 children at risk of leaving school, while about 13,000 students in 22 targeted schools indirectly benefited from the support services provided.
   
   
3. Tunisia’s access numbers are stronger than many regional peers, but dropout remains a serious issue, especially during the transition into lower secondary school. UNICEF’s “M4D” program (short for a four-dimensional dropout prevention model) was piloted in nine schools with high dropout rates. The model identifies students at risk, offers learning support and tutoring, and connects children to social services. UNICEF quotes USAID’s goal for the project as “securing the future of Tunisia by ensuring its children receive an education.”
   
   
4. Children in rural areas are more vulnerable to dropout because of distance, transportation costs and household poverty. UNICEF notes that rural children are often at higher risk “not only because of the distance from their home to the school, but also the economic disadvantage many of the families face.” This means Tunisia’s education challenge is partly geographic: a student’s outcomes can still depend heavily on whether they live near a well-supported school.
   
   
5. Historically, Tunisia has spent a large share of public resources on education, and recent data still show education as a major budget priority. World Bank-based data reveal that education spending represented 18.11% of government expenditure in 2023, after 19.97% in 2022. However, the key question is whether spending produces stronger learning, better completion and smoother transitions into work.
   
   
6. One barrier in judging outcomes is that Tunisia has not participated in the most recent PISA rounds. The European Training Foundation notes that Tunisia last participated in PISA in 2015, meaning “there is insufficient recent data to analyze.” This makes national exams, school dropout data and labor-market outcomes particularly crucial for assessing whether reforms are working.
   
   
7. Education does not yet translate reliably into employment. The European Training Foundation reported that Tunisia’s youth NEET rate – young people not in employment, education or training – increased from 32.0% in 2019 to 41.2% in 2022. The World Bank also finds that Tunisia’s economy grew only 1.4% in 2024 after zero growth in 2023, creating a difficult environment for school leavers and graduates.
   
   
8. Recent reforms increasingly focus on employability. Through the EU-funded Go4Youth project and World Bank support, Tunisia is modernizing ANETI, the national employment agency, with digital job-matching tools and better services for jobseekers. The project has already helped more than 4,000 job seekers complete a pre-positioning questionnaire, supported 2,600 diagnostic interviews, registered 2,800 companies and generated 9,100 new professional integration contracts. One ANETI counselor described the shift clearly: “We moved from paper-based contract generation, which took 1.5 hours, to less than 30 minutes using the digital tool.”

Overall, Tunisia has built a strong foundation: compulsory schooling, high public investment and a long tradition of valuing education. However, the country’s next education gains will depend less on enrollment alone and more on measurable outcomes. The approval of the 2025-2035 Education Sector Strategic Plan suggests Tunisia is moving in that direction, but its success will depend on whether reforms reach the students most at risk of being left behind.

– Jeff Zhou
Photo: Flickr