Out of School Children and Community-based Education in Afghanistan—A Historical Perspective

• In Event: Reducing gender inequality, increasing government legitimacy: Recent findings from research on community-based education in Afghanistan

Proposal

This presentation examines the history of community-based education in Afghanistan and describes a new strategy that Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education is implementing with the goal of expanding equal access to education to rural areas for out of school children, particularly for girls. CBE has long been a mechanism for ensuring equal access to education across the country, particularly in the most rural and remote communities. Originally supported by communities and governments themselves, the past decade has seen significant foreign investment given to NGOs to establish community-based classes. However, despite success at effectively expanding access to education, there remain barriers to fully aligning CBE with the formal education system.

This presentation focuses on one of these barriers: teacher recruitment strategies. The rural and remote areas where CBE classes are typically established often face a dearth of qualified teachers. This is particularly true for female teachers—a reality that can inhibit girls’ education. In the face of this deficit, NGOs establishing CBE classes often hire the most qualified teacher candidate from the area where the CBE class is located. However, this practice presents a dilemma for integrating the CBE class with the formal education system: because the teacher does not meet MoE requirements, she or he cannot become part of the MoE civil service. This presentation describes a new MoE strategy for addressing this challenge: identifying women from rural areas who do not meet MoE teacher requirements, and training them. The presentation presents preliminary findings from the roll out of this strategy and describes how it may serve to align CBE more fully with the formal education system, expanding educational access for girls in marginalized communities.

Author

• Muhammad Hosein Vahidi, Ministry of Education, Afghanistan