Turning Rubble into Resistance: Education in Haiti

On January 12, 2010, Haiti’s education system was physically and institutionally shattered. The earthquake killed more than 225,000 people and displaced well over a million, ripping away the routines that keep children learning and safe. In education specifically, large parts of the school network collapsed. Humanitarian education responders reported that about 80% of schools in the affected zone were damaged, and roughly 1.26 million children and youth were affected.  

The immediate crisis was not only about collapse of infrastructure. Teachers and school staff were killed or injured, books were lost, and many campuses became unsafe or unusable. Even schools that remained standing often closed for months because families were displaced, and basic services such as water, sanitation, and shelter were interrupted.

More than a decade after the earthquake, its effects on education are still visible in Haiti today. Many schools that were rebuilt after 2010 were reconstructed quickly with limited resources and now suffer from overcrowding and inadequate sanitation. Teacher shortages remain acute because many experienced educators left the profession after the disaster and were never fully replaced. As a result, classrooms in many parts of the country continue to be larger, less well-resourced, and more uneven in quality than before the earthquake, especially outside Port-au-Prince.

The earthquake also reshaped the financial structure of education. Because so many families lost livelihoods in 2010 and never fully recovered economically, household ability to pay school fees remains fragile. This has increased long-term dependence on tuition waivers, donor support, and private or religious providers, rather than a stable public education system. When external funding declines or political instability disrupts aid delivery, enrollment falls again, showing that the system has not fully transitioned from emergency support to sustainable national financing.

Finally, the earthquake normalized crisis as a permanent condition for schooling. Temporary classrooms and reliance on humanitarian actors became common after 2010 and remain part of educational life today due to continued natural disasters and political unrest. The 2010 earthquake did not simply damage schools in the short term, instead altering the trajectory of Haiti’s education system, making instability rather than steady development its defining feature.