Building Education System Resilience in a Poly-Crisis: Regional Perspectives
In this blogpost, part of #TheSouthAlsoKnows blog series, Aranza Ballesteros, Cathrine Brun, Santiago Cueto, Khoi Vinh Dang, Thi Ly Le, Roy William Mayega, Krishneel Reddy, Rachel Saliba, Maha Shuayb, Anthony Ssebagereka, Julius Ssentongo, and Tetiana Zheriobkina bring together six regional perspectives on education system resilience as part of the GPE KIX Observatory on Education System Resilience initiative.
In the context of a growing poly-crisis, complex challenges such as climate change, forced migration, conflict and economic shocks increasingly intersect and compound one another. These overlapping crises have direct and indirect effects on education systems, which are deeply vulnerable to the uncertainties of rapid change. Strengthening education system resilience — the capacity to not only withstand shocks but adapt and evolve over time — is therefore critical. While resilience sometimes risks becoming another buzzword, it has important implications for how education systems are understood, governed and supported. Yet there is still no clear consensus on what education system resilience means in theory or practice.
Through the Observatory on Education System Resilience initiative, implemented under the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (KIX), six regional observatories are helping fill this gap. They are examining potential future disruptions to education systems and how resilience is understood and practiced within these systems — across GPE partner countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and the Pacific.
Emerging findings suggest that while understandings of resilience vary across contexts, and use of the term remains uneven in education policy documents, education systems in each region are integrating elements of risk reduction and preparedness planning, though often in reaction to past or ongoing crises. Findings also suggest that while policies recognize the needs of vulnerable learners disproportionately affected by shocks and disruptions, this rarely translates into targeted action, though gradual progress is being made.
Understanding resilience across contexts, knowledge systems and languages
Education system resilience is neither a fixed concept nor universally understood. Instead, it is shaped by local s and lived realities, Indigenous s and the perspectives of different stakeholders. These influences are further reflected in language, as many local terms associated with resilience do not align neatly with the English concept. Resilience is often articulated through related ideas—such as school safety, disaster preparedness, learning continuity and educational quality improvement.
In countries frequently affected by disasters, resilience is often framed around awareness raising, preparedness, risk management and adaptation. This includes building safer schools, integrating disaster risk reduction (DRR) into curricula, and training teachers to respond to emergencies. Hurricane-prone Caribbean island states, for example, prioritize disaster-resilient infrastructure and plan for distance learning during hurricane season. In conflict-affected settings, resilience centres on finding alternative ways to keep education going when national systems falter or collapse. In South Sudan, amid conflict and climate shocks, resilience is closely linked to maintaining educational continuity through community-based contingency planning and by aligning school calendars with seasonal realities.
Language itself gives resilience distinct meanings in different contexts. In Arabic, several translations of “resilience” exist, each with distinct implications. The most common term, murūna (flexibility or adaptability), refers to adjusting to and coping with crises. Another widely invoked concept, sumūd (steadfastness), looks beyond survival to include resistance, dignity, liberation and the pursuit of a just future. With murūna, the focus is on whether a system can continue to function under pressure, whether or not that functioning aligns with community aspirations or meaningful educational outcomes.
Across regions, these nuances mean that resilience is often articulated through context-specific concepts rather than the term itself. In South and Southeast Asia, resilience is conveyed through a cluster of terms that emphasize coping with disruption, adaptation and the need to sustain learning under crisis conditions. In Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, educational resilience is more often described in terms of effectiveness, stability, adaptability, relevance, modernization, quality enhancement and sustainability.
The framing of resilience also varies by stakeholder, reflecting differing roles and priorities. In sub-Saharan Africa, national policymakers emphasize maintaining teaching and learning during crises while aligning resilience efforts with broader national agendas. Local communities and civil society organizations focus on community‑based action, resource availability and partnerships that safeguard learning at the local level. Teachers tend to define resilience as their ability to adapt pedagogical practices, manage changing learning environments, and continue teaching despite constraints.
Resilience in policy documents
Across regions, the term “resilience” is used unevenly in education policies, with more frequent references to related concepts like disaster risk management or system strengthening. It is often framed around selected components of system functioning rather than whole-system perspectives. In many contexts, individual resilience is emphasized over system-level capacities. Moreover, the term tends to appear mainly in documents produced or influenced by international development actors, who play an active role in shaping resilience agendas in both policy and practice.
In Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, “resilience” appears mainly in broad national development strategies: in education-specific documents, related concepts associated with crisis management and preparedness, DRR and climate adaptation are more commonly used instead. In LAC, resilience is largely absent from education laws and curricula but appears more often in education strategic plans — particularly in Caribbean countries — where it is linked to infrastructure, technology and innovation, student wellbeing and climate resilience. Across Pacific Island countries, the term is beginning to feature in education sector plans and regional frameworks such as the Pacific Regional Education Framework 2018-2030, albeit unevenly. When “resilience” appears, it is typically situated within adaptation and DRR rather than as a comprehensive education system resilience framing.
The emphasis placed on individual versus system-level resilience also varies. In LAC, resilience is more often framed around developing students’ skills for coping with shocks and disruptions. By contrast, education policies in Timor-Leste, the Philippines and Vietnam tend to reference both individual and system-level dimensions of resilience.
International development actors have played a central role in introducing resilience into policy discourse and shaping how it is operationalized, including through funding targeted areas such as DRR, emergency preparedness and school infrastructure improvement. Although this has expanded the space for resilience‑related work, it raises important questions about local ownership, cultural grounding and alignment with local priorities and practices. In the Pacific, Indigenous notions of resilience are rarely referenced by international actors, while in MENA, more local, justice‑oriented and transformative interpretations such as sumūd are overlooked.
Resilience in practice
Although the term is not always explicitly used, countries have developed a wide range of practices that align closely with resilience, shaped by lived realities and the dominant risks they face. Most of these practices focus on system strengthening, planning and responding to shocks and disruptions.
In the Pacific, recurrent natural hazards have led to school safety programs, emergency school feeding, multimodal learning, community-based contingency planning and investment in resilient infrastructure. In MENA, issues of conflict and displacement have led to measures such as double-shift schooling and digital and hybrid learning. In line with their understandings of resilience, most countries focus on practices that strengthen systems so they can withstand disruptions and ensure learning continuity and system functioning, rather than practices such as anticipation, planning, prevention and mitigation. This is the case in sub‑Saharan Africa, where education strategic plans refer to anticipation, planning, prevention and mitigation but concentrate primarily on system strengthening — such as by investing in ICT for distance learning, integrating DRR and decentralizing decision‑making to enable local action during crises.
Most existing practices tend to be reactive, addressing crises after they occur. Where forward-looking risk analytics and early warning systems exist, they are typically embedded in national DRR frameworks rather than education-specific plans. These frameworks call for continuous hazard monitoring, risk assessment that identifies vulnerable groups, and checks on infrastructure and school safety. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have placed greater emphasis on forward-looking monitoring and reporting. For instance, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines have started to promote school safety committees to strengthen preparedness. But approaches remain uneven across regions. In practice, anticipation still leans on lessons from past shocks, with initiatives centered mainly on natural hazard forecasting and preparedness. While this focus is necessary, it can overlook other significant disruptions and limit readiness for new risks emerging at greater speed and scale.
Disproportionate impacts on vulnerable learners
Vulnerable groups are disproportionately affected during disruptions, as crises amplify existing inequalities and deepen barriers to education access and retention. Across regions, policy recognition of vulnerable learners rarely translates into targeted action to address their specific challenges. Resilience efforts tend to prioritize access and continuity, without adequately addressing the needs of vulnerable learners or tackling structural barriers that drive their marginalization.
In Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, countries have established legal frameworks promoting inclusive education, but implementation gaps remain: materials adapted for students with disabilities are limited, qualified teachers are concentrated in urban areas, and crisis response protocols rarely explicitly address vulnerable groups. In MENA, Africa and LAC, strategic plans likewise call for inclusion and identify barriers facing marginalized populations, but lack clear measures to overcome them.
Across regions, resilience efforts tend to prioritize maintaining access to education and continuity of learning. Far less attention is given to learning quality, socio-emotional wellbeing and the underlying issues that make some students more vulnerable to disruptions. This omission risks inadvertently reinforcing inequalities. For example, in Lebanon, inclusion is often framed around the enrolment of refugees or children with disabilities — without addressing intersecting inequalities such as poverty and unequal resource distribution that disproportionately limit access among these groups.
Despite these challenges, countries are taking steps to address the needs of vulnerable groups, including during crises. Remedial programs to reintegrate out-of-school children, enhanced digital connectivity for remote learning, more accessible school infrastructure and adapted learning materials are just a few examples. Sierra Leone’s National Policy on Radical Inclusion prioritizes access to quality education for marginalized groups — particularly children with disabilities, pregnant girls, rural learners and those from low-income households — by promoting inclusive learning environments and community engagement. Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia are strengthening digital access and skills to better connect students in remote and nomadic communities.
While the risks and crises differ across regions, the impacts on vulnerable groups tend to converge. Whether due to conflict, climate extremes or economic collapse — crises compound the barriers already faced by marginalized learners.
A need for comprehensive, locally owned resilience planning
Evidence from the Observatory initiative shows that education system resilience remains an evolving concept, with understandings in different regions shaped by lived realities, local knowledge and stakeholder perspectives. These differing views of resilience can be broadly seen as a spectrum — from reactive, short-term responses that focus on coping to more proactive, anticipatory and holistic approaches that strengthen systems over the long term and reduce reliance on crisis response. Resilience can be framed around specific system components or seen as a comprehensive, whole-system approach. Understandings of its aim range from sustaining existing education systems — including their flaws — to transforming these systems by addressing the root causes of vulnerability and fragility. These different framings have important implications for how education systems are governed and supported in the era of poly-crisis.
As disruptions become more frequent, complex and interconnected, we need to move beyond a narrow focus on emergencies toward a more comprehensive systems perspective. Making this shift requires integrating resilience into long-term planning and financing, with greater investment in foresight and anticipatory approaches. Regional observatories are addressing this gap by conducting horizon scans, developing future scenarios and promoting foresight practices among stakeholders. However, many countries have limited funding to address immediate crises, let alone build toward long-term education system resilience. Any such efforts tend to rely on technical and funding support from international development actors, which can create path dependency and limit national ownership.
Moving forward, reorienting education systems will likely require innovative approaches to financing and supporting their resilience. In a world of growing and intersecting disruptions, resilience can no longer be an add-on — it must become a core capability of education systems.
About the authors
The authors of this blog post are implementing partners of the GPE KIX Observatory on Education System Resilience initiative. Details about each regional observatory and implementing partner can be found on the GPE KIX website. Author names appear in alphabetical order by last name to reflect their equal authorship.