Afghan girls' education in danger

Almaty. February 25. Kazakhstan Today - Aid groups said on Thursday girls' education in Afghanistan is at risk because of lack of funds and equipment and poor teacher-training, Kazakhstan Today reports.

A new report is warning that hard-won progress in girls' education in Afghanistan, heralded as one of few success stories of the last nine years, is increasingly under threat as international interest in reconstruction efforts ebbs away, Guardian reported.

The High Stakes report, released on Thursday by 16 aid agencies including Oxfam and Care International, says that the hard-won and expensive gains in girls' education are at risk of being destroyed as the international community turns away from development to focus on national security agendas and the timetable for troop withdrawal.

Education has long been held up as a shining example of reconstruction in Afghanistan. Donors have ploughed approximately $1.9bn into rebuilding the Afghan education system since 2001. The Back to School campaign, launched in 2002 as a joint Afghan government/UN Initiative, was labelled an "inspiration" and the flagship of reconstruction and development efforts in Afghanistan.

The achievements of the Back to School campaign were undeniably impressive. In just the past two years, 2,281 schools have been built across the country. Around 5,000 Afghan girls were enrolled in school in 2001. Now there are 2.4 million, a staggering 480-fold increase.

Now, according to the report, Afghanistan's education system is sliding backwards and becoming crippled by poverty, increasing insecurity and a lack of investment in infrastructure and trained staff.

Underneath the impressive figures, there lies a significant gap between enrolment and attendance. The report's research claims that far fewer of the 2.4 million girls enrolled in school are actually in the classroom. In 2009 approximately 22% - around 446,682 - of female students were considered long-term absentees.

There are 2.4 million girls enrolled at school, but around 20 percent do not attend classes regularly. Those who do make it to school face obstacles including open-air classrooms and a journey of up to three hours each way, said the "High Stakes" report, Reuters informed.

More than a third of the interviewees said insecurity was a major obstacle to education, with parents keeping their daughters home after a string of attacks on girls' schools.

A shortage of female teachers -- as few as one in every hundred educators in the most conservative or unstable areas -- also limits girls' hopes of getting more than a primary education, all that most of their peers receive.

Access to learning for women has become emblematic of the positive changes Western donors have tried to bring about as they poured billions of dollars into Afghanistan.

But development groups working to improve women's position fear that Western governments' focus is on handing over security responsibilities to Afghan troops by 2014, and starting the withdrawal from a war that voters back home are tiring of.

Poverty, early marriage and poor security were the main reasons girls had to drop out of school, the report said.

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