Presentation #1: Community-based education policy of Afghan Ministry of Education: Renewed Commitment to CBE and guidance for sustainability

• In Event: Letting communities take charge: a randomized controlled trial on sustaining schools in remote villages in Afghanistan

Proposal

In early 2018, the Afghan Ministry of Education released a revised Community-Based Education (CBE) Policy. This policy aligns the development of community-based education with broader government strategies and goals and strengthens the institutional structure within the Ministry of Education that specifically targets CBE. The innovative approach in the policy that offers potentially transformative effects in education services in the country is that it lays out guidelines for CBE monitoring and evaluation based on systematic data collection at the national level. The data collection on CBE will help fill a gap in the national Education Management and Information System (EMIS) and improve its effectiveness. Most notable is that the 2018 CBE Policy aligns well with the Citizen’s Charter National Priority Program’s concepts and embraces the notion of CDD model in sustaining primary education service delivery in rural areas. Specifically, both the Citizen’s Charter initiative of the national government and the CBE Policy of the Ministry of Education identify three village-level community institutions, namely Community Development Councils (CDCs), Education Shuras (ESs), and School Management Shuras (SMSs) to play crucial roles and responsibilities in providing education to their communities.

The CBE Policy dedicates a section on the sustainability of CBE after the implementing NGOs withdraw. While handing over CBE classes to the government when the NGOs withdraw is still the first option for transferring the management and administrative responsibilities to continue the education services for the communities, the policy stipulates a handover of CBE classes to the co-management of the village level local community institutions as the second option.

This presentation will focus on the process of evolution in the government’s recognition of community-based education in the past several years. In the 2012 version of the CBE policy, CBE was identified merely as an “alternative method to education” in contrast to the current National Education Strategic Plan III (2015 - 2020) which states that CBE is a key strategy for extending public schooling. Moving further toward solidifying CBE as a key government approach to providing universal access to education, the 2018 CBE Policy defines CBE as “part of the formal education system in Afghanistan” and is a specifically crucial model in reaching out to the “underserved areas” of the country. This presentation will showcase the government’s renewed commitment to CBE and its potential to transform education service delivery to rural villages in the country and to share implementation processes as well as the most recent outcomes of this policy in the context of the prevalence of out of school children in Afghanistan.

Author

• Jalaludin Atayee, Afghanistan Ministry of Education