CEOAFRICA news desk reporting from South Sudan that schools have switched from the country have switched from Arabic textbooks, which has been difficult to comprehend, to English.

At the presentation of 400,000 textbooks to primary school pupils in the state of Western Equatorial, Tandu Emmanuel, a teacher at Yambio Primary School could not hide his joy at this development. “We could not understand Arabic. Writing from right to left was a problem. Now, that English is on, we shall use the books properly with the same writing. We know that our children will understand very well,” he told VOA news.

The new books follow a national curriculum that was rolled out last year. They were printed under a partnership with the British Department for International Development (DFID) and the South Sudanese government.

However, only half of the books for Western Equatoria have arrived, but the rest should be delivered within the first few weeks.

The DFID has estimated that 15 percent of students who drop out of school in South Sudan do so because they don’t have textbooks.