Understanding the crisis

Since 2023, Tunisia’s education system has been repeatedly disrupted by strikes, grade boycotts, and escalating confrontations between teacher unions and the Ministry of Education (MOE). Each year, nearly 100,000 students drop out of school—an average of roughly 300 dropouts per day—highlighting the persistent challenges facing the system. At the peak of the crisis, authorities suspended the salaries of more than 17,000 teachers after they refused to submit student grades. These disruptions are not isolated incidents, but part of a broader wave of social unrest: in January 2026 alone, Tunisia recorded over 500 protests, nearly half linked to employment conditions and unpaid wages, including those of teachers. Yet the significance of this breakdown becomes clearer when viewed against the central role education has historically played in Tunisia.

Since the 1950s, education in Tunisia has been a cornerstone of the country’s state-building efforts. For generations of Tunisians, public education offered the main path out of illiteracy and socioeconomic marginalisation. It is precisely this historical role that makes the current deadlock so consequential. Today, negotiations have reached an unprecedented impasse, with little prospect of resolution in the short term.

At the heart of this stalemate lies a struggle over authority and legitimacy between teacher unions and the MOE, reducing reform negotiations to confrontations rather than a shared effort to improve the system.

At the heart of this stalemate lies a struggle over authority and legitimacy between teacher unions and the MOE, reducing reform negotiations to confrontations rather than a shared effort to improve the system.

The two sides of the stalemate: Teacher unions vs the MOE?

The long political history of the Tunisian General Labor Union (UGTT) accounts for its elevated profile after 2011. The union has been a key actor in Tunisia’s struggle for independence, state-building after 1956, negotiating workers’ rights, and supporting the country’s democratic transition. This legacy has created a strong perception within the constituencies of the UGTT, including teacher unions, of being the true guardians of public education rather than partners in its reform. For instance, over the past decade, teacher unions repeatedly used nationwide strikes and school-year-disrupting tactics—such as nationwide walkouts in 2012 and 2017 and a year-long “silent strike” throughout the 2022-23 school year, where teachers withheld student grades—to push the MOE and the wider government into negotiations. This shows how teacher unions have been influential in shaping the directions of the education sector.

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Today, however, unions’ mobilisation capacity has been put in check and their legacy of being the true guardian of public education is being contested. The MOE, the other side of the debate, is framing reform around state authority, legitimacy, and fiscal rationalisation rather than compromise. This was evident after both parties signed an agreement on 23 May 2023. The deal included phased salary increases of 100 Tunisian dinars per year over three years, starting in 2026, along with broader commitments to continue sectoral dialogue and address teachers’ demands. However, the unions later accused the government of failing to fully implement these commitments. Moreover, the government’s recent decision to “unilaterally” set wage increases for the fiscal years 2026-27-28 was described by union leadership as “a fatal blow to the bargaining policy that has been fundamental to social peace for decades.” These defensive positions reflect an environment that is driven by mutual mistrust and competition over who leads decision making in the education sector. 

Human and structural effects of the reform stalemate

This stalemate has stifled innovation and initiative taking and gave way to a mentality of risk aversion among teachers, many of whom say they now feel reduced to mere breadwinners rather than shapers of the next generation. This shift in teachers’ self-perceptions also has a chilling effect on students, who define their school experience in terms of attendance and grades rather than life learning, ethical, social, and emotional development. This has been reflected in the 2023, 2024, and 2025 Baccalaureate exams, where success rates in interior regions such as Kasserine, Gafsa, and Jendouba lagged far behind urban and coastal regions, with rates barely exceeding 30%.

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At the structural level, the top-down approach to education governance has also limited the space for civil society organisations and grassroots actors to participate in enriching school life.

Anecdotal evidence from local CSO leaders shows that organising a youth-focused programme in a school often requires navigating a lengthy bureaucratic process and relying on personal connections within regional administrations and may ultimately still be rejected on procedural grounds.

Anecdotal evidence from local CSO leaders shows that organising a youth-focused programme in a school often requires navigating a lengthy bureaucratic process and relying on personal connections within regional administrations and may ultimately still be rejected on procedural grounds.

In this climate, reform is no longer treated as a shared national project but as a technically or politically constrained arena that is increasingly difficult for third party actors to influence. The reform space has become increasingly insular and selective, with limited opportunities for meaningful participation beyond formal consultations or symbolic involvement in predefined processes.

Overall, advancing any reform initiative increasingly depends on personal connections and an informal network of insiders rather than broad, transparent debate, which further entrenches the same transactional logic that dominates the core negotiations. These competitive attitudes and the lack of openness toward civil society, youth, and women will only hinder any meaningful progress in education reform. Ultimately, the way out of this bottleneck is through renewed collaboration between the government, unions, and civil society actors—working toward a shared reform agenda rather than resorting to tit-for-tat strategies and exclusion.

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

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