TUNIS — The government has set aside an additional 67 million dinars in social assistance for the 2026-2027 school, university and vocational training year, according to a statement issued after a restricted ministerial council held on Friday at the Kasbah under Prime Minister Sarra Zaafrani Zenzri.

The envelope is intended for cash and in-kind support to poor and low-income households facing back-to-school costs, and free transport for the pupils concerned. Around it, the council issued a long list of instructions to ministries: reduce class overcrowding, speed up construction and maintenance work on schools, secure the supply of subsidised textbooks and exercise books at unchanged prices, reinforce school and university transport, and guarantee a regular supply of drinking water in educational institutions.

What is actually new, and what is not

The 67 million dinars is the one figure in the announcement. Everything else is stated as an objective without a budget line, a delivery date or a named responsible body — which makes the commitments difficult to track and, later, difficult to hold anyone to.

Several items on the list are also recurring. The pledge to guarantee drinking water in schools lands in a summer in which Tunisia has been managing rotating cuts and bottled-water shortages; the pledge to control distribution circuits for textbooks and fight "speculation and monopoly" repeats language the government used this month over bottled water, where inspectors found tens of thousands of litres held in Sousse warehouses. The problem those pledges respond to is real. The instruments announced to fix it are the same ones that did not prevent it.

The council also committed to expanding the "Vie scolaire" information system and remote enrolment procedures, to strengthening school health programmes including vaccination and psychological support, to inclusive education for pupils with disabilities or learning difficulties, and to preventing violence in schools.

Vocational training, again framed as the answer

The government presented vocational training as a bridge to the labour market, promising better alignment between the specialities on offer and the needs of employers, and more practical placements. That framing has been constant across Tunisian governments for two decades; what has been missing is a public measurement of whether graduates of those specialities find work. Unemployment among graduates remains one of the country's most persistent social pressures.

What would make this verifiable

The council's own list suggests the test. Aid programmes of this kind have been criticised in Tunisia less for their size than for their targeting: the 67 million dinars will be judged by whether it reaches households in the social registry before the first week of term rather than after it, and whether the number of beneficiaries is published. On textbooks, the verifiable commitment is stock available in each governorate before classes resume, not a promise to fight speculation once shortages appear. On classroom overcrowding, the measurable output is pupils per class by governorate, a statistic the education ministry already collects.

Term begins next month. None of those figures has been published yet.