Country Name: Afghanistan
A. Status of key indicators for girls’ education
Include year and Source
Girls’ enrolment as a proportion of boys – Primary
GPI Primary:
60% of girls are out of school (MoE document for FTI on More Female Teachers in Education).
Out of 7.4 million children ,37% are girls which is 2.7 million and 64% are boys which is 4.6 million
(www.emis.af)
(0.64)
Girls’ enrolment as a proportion of boys – Lower
secondary:
GPI Lower secondary:
GPI Lower secondary (0.49)
GPI Upper secondary (0.39)
OOSC - primary
OOS girls – primary
Five million children that is 42% of school-aged children are out of school mostly (over 60 %) girls
( Interim Plan FTI, 2010).
OOS – lower secondary
OOS disaggregated by primary, lower secondary and upper secondary is not available. The number
above is total for all OOSC.
OOS girls – lower secondary
Other relevant indicators
The gender parity index varies from province to province with status of girls’ education better in the
provinces of Hirat and Badakhshan (nine girls to 10 boys) and worst in Zabul and Uruzgan (one girl to
10 boys) where insecurity is high because of the on-going conflict( FTI Interim Plan)
Girls enrolment particularly retention in higher classes is dependent on a number of factors - female
teachers, friendly /safe learning environment, sanitation and hygiene etc. The percentage of female
teachers differs considerably by province. Female teachers constitute only one percent, three percent,
and four percent respectively of teachers in the provinces of Paktika, Khost, and Uruzgan, whereas in
Kabul and Balkh they represent 73 and 51 percent, respectively. ( Interim Plan, FTI, 2011)
B. FTI/Education Sector Plans
Year of joining FTI
2011
Main development partners involved:
List and indicate whether GAC or not;
The main development partners are MoE, the donor community - Sweden, Canada, Norway, Denmark,
Australia, Japan etc, nmultilateral organizations, - USAID, WB etc. In addition, International and
national organizations such as Aga Khan Foundation, Save the Children, Swedish Committee for
Afghanistan, Care International are members of the partnership.
UNICEF’s role:
FTI – Supervising Entity, Education cluster co –lead with Save the Children, AGEI co- chair with MoE
and Secretariat. Member of Human Resource Development Board.
Critical issues emerging in the country context of
The changing socio-political context of security transition will have an impact on the social services
overall sector plans/FTI management – critical
delivery sector especially education with a decreased funding the impact is likely to be at school and
bottlenecks
community levels where there are already big challenges of funding. The security challenges have
reduced the humanitarian space for service delivery and most affected are women and girls. The
entrenched socio-cultural norms that create challenges for girls and women’s education.
Gender in education is part of MoE plans and discourse on education. However, the capacity and
resources to bring actual change is limited, and could be further reduced with the transition.
C. Key issues and challenges in girls’ education relating to:
Early Childhood Education
Primary Education
Secondary Education
Afghanistan does not have a universal policy on ECE. This year MoE set up two ECD centers in two
schools located in the center of Kabul city. Whereas NGOs have ECE modalities that are communitybased and cost-effective, the MoE envision a school based ECE. Lack of resources particularly technical
human resources makes ECE provision more challenging. School-based ECE reduces women’s
participation in ECE as opposed to community-based ECE models of organizations such as Save the
Children which engages communities /mothers meaningfully in the process.
Though primary education is free and compulsory, there are no mechanisms to implement the
compulsory part. Also what is free is the tuition component but there are other non -tuition costs that
make education not affordable by the poor households, as such girls are sacrificed at the expense of the
boys when a choice has to be made of whom should go to school.
About 4.7 million children are not enrolled in school of which 60% are girls. Girls high drop out from
school especially from grade 4 and 5 due to lack of female teachers among others. Most female teachers
are concentrated in few major cities.
Early marriages for girls and poverty for children results in high drop out. Over half of 412 districts in
Youth/Vocational Technical Education
Teacher Education and Training
Afghanistan do not have upper secondary schools for girls, and in higher grades boys and girls do not
learn in the same class. Communities do not send girls to schools if located far from homes and the older
the girls get, the more their retention depends on availability of female teachers.
Limited access
The total no. of teachers grade 1-12 is 170,000 (29% females). 35,000 out of 170,000 teachers have not
completed high school, however, younger teachers are also highly motivated. MoE Teacher Education
Department is considering strategies to upgrade the teachers who do not meet the standard qualification
of completing two years of college after graduation from school.
D. UNGEI partnership:
Whether separate or existing gender working
group etc.
There is one Afghanistan Girls Education Initiative. The AGEI action plan for 2011 has five sub-groups
 Create a website for AGEI
 Gender sensitization of the curriculum
 Communication for Behaviour change in families and communities
 Increase the pool of female teachers
 Community participation (Increase women’s participation in School Management Shura)
Year established:
2007
Member partners
See the list attached
Geographical scope:
National level. UNICEF also supported the roll-out of AGEI in western zone.
Current thematic focus:
Female teachers, Curriculum, Behaviour Change Communication, Women’s engagement as part of
School Management Shura
There is a strong MoE and partners commitment . Members include international organizations who
are committed to AGEI. National NGOs work effectively to promote girls education but do not
participate actively in the partnership meetings. The general AGEI meetings where best practices and
progress is discussed are well attended. However, the participation in the sub-working group is
challenging. Despite all the challenges, AGEI is gaining strength and recognition by education
stakeholders
MoE Departments gender sensitization. Mainstreaming gender in workplans, Most policy level positions
at MoE are dominated by men hence the few women in MoE are not given their rightful recognition of
Strength of partnership:
Capacity Gap of the partnership
their work. The creation of a Girls Education department in MoE, staffed with members with limited
capacity and experience can work against promotion of AGEI.
E. Collaboration with FTI:
Possible areas of engagement:
Possible modalities of engagement:
Members of AGEI took active part in the two-day Education for All FTI workshop. Increasing the pool
of female teachers was one of the area in the proposal development. One of the theme for the FTI was
Multiple Pathways to education which came up with diverse strategies such as community based
education and accelerated learning which have proven effective for promoting girls education.
Community participation was another critical area given the role communities paly of mobilisation –
parents to send girls to schools as well as participation in providing safe learning environment including
security of the schools to prevent them from attacks.
UNICEF as the co-chair is the supervising entity for FTI. UNICEF is well-positioned to ensure FTI
addresses the multiple barriers to girls education and ensures promoting equity.
The AGEI chair who is the Teacher Education Department director from MoE is involved in the
development of the FTI proposal, providing leadership to the female teachers theme group.
Furthermore the FTI process is seen as an opportunity to bring education partners, donors and the
Ministry of Education together to address the four theme areas that were agreed by the partners as focus
for the FTI proposal in a more sustained way to promote access and quality education. Gender issues are
cross-cutting in all the four theme areas which will contribute and promote the work of AGEI in support
of girls education.
Value addition:
Degree of governmental acceptance to
collaboration
High
F. Expected support from
GAC
UNGEI Secretariat
New /initiatives to promote and support girls education within the context of conflict and emergency
situation such as in Afghanistan. Advocacy for additional funds for education in support of girls
education, technical support in areas that have been identified by CO.
Advocacy for increased resources for girls education and female teachers development
UNICEF and most education stakeholders focus on primary education and lower secondary. The upper
secondary level has received little attention. Lack of female teachers stem from lack of secondary
schools for girls who can serve as potential female teachers for the future. Advocacy for the full cycle of
secondary education for girls is very important. Currently modalities of relocation of teachers from
urban to provinces without female is not cost-effective neither sustainable. Supporting girls in lower
secondary to finish higher secondary and providing them the opportunity to become future teachers can
break the cycle of inadequate no. of female teachers and hence the low number of girls in secondary
school.(Per-cent of girls in primary and secondary school is 37%). Female literacy rate is 18%