A small school stands near the village of Xiis, dwarfed by mountains on the northern coast of Somalia. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Somali government devised a plan to raise the level of literacy in the country. Private schools were nationalized in 1973, and education was made free-of-charge for all students and compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 14. Impediments to the growth of the state education system have been difficult to overcome, however; between 1980 and 1985 the proportion of children enrolled in primary schools dropped from 20 per cent to 11 per cent. The majority of Somalis remain illiterate, and the country’s civil war has caused additional collapse of the education system since 1991.