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Addressing the lack of qualified female teachers in rural Afghanistan

Wed, April 17, 8:00 to 9:30am, Hyatt Regency, Floor: Bay (Level 1), Bayview B

Proposal

Lack of professional teachers is one of the greatest challenges for the development of education in Afghanistan. Generally, there is lack of female teachers: UNESCO reports that 31.7% of all teachers are female, and only 37% of female teachers working in General Education are trained in INSET I-III . 80 out of 364 districts across the country have no female teachers. Even girls’-only schools face a lack of female teachers; most parents are unhappy with having male teachers in girls’ school. Lack of female teachers is both a cause and effect of low participation of girls in education. Qualified female teachers are mostly located in urban centres, with very few to none in rural areas.

Around 84,000 girls attend Community-Based Education classes. CBE policy mandates the preferential hiring of female teachers, even those who have not completed a full cycle of primary school themselves (let alone have formal teaching qualifications).

The GEC-STAGES program in Afghanistan, is a consortium led by Aga Khan Foundation with SCI, CARE & CRS. Save the Children implements in 3 of the 13 STAGES provinces namely, Kabul, Kandahar and Faryab. Addressing lack of female teachers is one of STAGES components, through two delivery models of Teacher Professional Development (TPD) support:

• TPD delivered directly by the STAGES consortium members
• Support to TTCs to deliver TPD
One of the approaches offered under direct TPD delivery is STAGES Girls’ Learning to Teach Afghanistan (GLTTA). This is a ‘foundations of teaching’ teacher training package for young women, targeting high school girls enrolled in grades 11 and 12. The aim of the training is to increase the number of potential female teachers by preparing girls to become primary school teachers for students in grades one to three. GLTTA operates on a voluntary basis and is delivered during non-school hours. GLTTA students attend workshops for lectures, discussions and activities for 48 days across a period of six months and then read and reflect on their learning through guided questions. They also participate in practical learning experiences in different classrooms in the CBE school that they are placed in . STAGES has just completed a baseline study, which covered teacher quality among other indicators. This presentation aims to explore the practical and strategic response to this problem, key questions to be explored are:
• Does support to GLTTA and TTC improve the quality of female teachers?
• To what extent does GLTTA contribute to attendance and positive learning outcomes for girls?
• How TPD model developed by SCI enables female educators to develop skills and capacity that enables them to develop their professional lives?
• How does this change at micro project level influence the meso and macro government levels based on advocacy initiatives demonstrated through STAGES?
• How could learning from this be used to inform system change?

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