With this qualitative study, we contribute to the discourse on the governance of education systems in the context of crisis and fragility. We look at the crisis management during the COVID-19 pandemic in the education sector of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), where a high proportion of schools is owned and managed by non-state actors. Conducting a content analysis of 18 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders in the education sector, we analyzed the ideas and understandings that guided their crisis management. We identified understandings of schooling and of their own agency as main factors explaining how different actors reacted to the crisis. We also found generally limited advocacy for the right to education in the given crisis situation, in which mostly non-state actors took over the responsibility to fill gaps in the DRC’s education system left by the state. In doing so, however, they contributed to the strengthening of the central state’s authority at the same time.