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We Don’t Have Diversity here, but Inequality, That’s in the Design of the Education System: Tunisian Teachers, Diversification and the Defunding of Education

February 27, 2025

From September 2022 to June 2023, Professor Hania Sobhy interviewed over 60 Tunisian teachers from different parts of the country, in addition to union leaders, experts, researchers, former ministers, and other stakeholders. In this piece, Sobhy shows how teachers found it challenging to address the notion of diversity but pointed to changing dynamics of diversification in schools, which has been driven by the global defunding of education, exacerbated by COVID-19 school closures and deepened by increased tracking and privatization in the system. In this context of defunding, teachers constructed this diversification negatively in terms of its impact on student learning and their own classroom management. These patterns of diversification are seen as exacerbating regional inequalities, increasing teacher dissatisfaction, catalyzing waves of protest, and fueling the desire among (male) students for irregular and regular migration.