Education in Afghanistan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Education in Afghanistan. The government of Mohammad Zahir Shah (ruled 1933–73) significantly improved Afghanistan’s education system, making primary schools available to about half the population less than 12 years of age and expanding the secondary school system and the national university at Kabul. Despite those improvements, in 1979 some 90 percent of the population remained illiterate. Beginning with the Soviet invasion of 1979, successive wars virtually destroyed the education system. Most teachers fled the country during the Soviet occupation and the subsequent civil war. By 1996, only about 650 schools were functioning. In 1996 the Taliban regime banned education for females, and the madrassa (mosque school) became the main source of primary and secondary education. After the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001, the interim government received substantial international aid to restore the education system. In 2003 some 7,000 schools were operating in 20 of the 34 provinces, with 27,000 teachers teaching 4.2 million children (including 1.2 million girls). Of that number, about 3.9 million were in primary schools. When Kabul University reopened in 2002, some 24,000 students, male and female, enrolled. Five other universities were being rehabilitated in the early 2000s. Since the end of the dogmatic Taliban era in 2001, public school curricula have included religious subjects, but detailed instruction is left to religious teachers. In 2003 an estimated 57 percent of men and 86 percent of women were illiterate, and the lack of skilled and educated workers was a major economic disadvantage.