ANAFAE

Lost Generation?

The number of out-of school children increased in many Asian countries. This marks a change after years of stable development and is caused by conflicts, natural disasters, poverty, recent migration, but also is a result of priorities of governments towards the education sectors.

Some important key points characterize the present situation in Afghanistan:

UN data estimates the population to be 32 million in 2015 and the population growth with 3%

According to the data used in latest Education Sector Analysis (January 2016), the population is the second youngest in the world, 4 percent is under 15 years of age.

The number of people with disabilities is estimated at 800,000, equivalent to 2.7 % of the population. According to the Accessibility Organizations for Afghan Disabled, 95 % of children with disabilities do not attend schools due to inaccessible environment.

In Afghanistan, 27% of children aged 5-11 years were involved in child labour activities, while the figure is 22% for children aged 12-14 years. The prevalence of total child labour (aged 5-14 years) is 25%.

Of the 42% of children aged 5-14 attending school, more than half of them (51%) are also involved in child labour activities.

Afghanistan has made steady progress in reconstituting the education sector over the past decade. An initial “Back to school campaign” started in 2002. At a time when around 900.000 student were enrolled. Now more than 8.5 million students are enrolled, 39 % of them girls.

Only 55% of children of primary school age (7-12) are attending school. In urban areas, 78% of children attend school while in rural areas attendance is only 50%.

Overall, 14 percent of children who started primary school dropped out before the final level.

For each ten students, who start in grade one, less than six make it to the end of grade six and only two make it to the end of grade 12.

The MoE estimates that there are over 3.5 million children out of school.

In addition, Afghanistan has one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. Age 15 + had a male literacy rate of 62 and a female of 18 against the median value for low income countries of M 70 and F 57 respectively.

The situation is complex and Bashir Khaliqi, Director of ANAFAE argued that education programmes for out-of-school children and youth should be demand-driven and be backed up by the government and national strategies. He cited ANAFAE’s work in community-based education centres, implementing tailor-based programmes in close cooperation with the local communities and, at the same time, these centres operate according to standards and criteria set by the government.

Ensuring the rights of children for education requires innovative, is a priority and collaborative approaches from all stakeholders – policy-makers, practitioners, development workers – as well as the involvement of socially committed private sector and NGO partners is urgently needed.

For the Asian Region the participants of the Summit recognized five distinct positions of the 16.7 million children who are “out-of-school”, many of them from some of the region’s most disadvantaged and marginalized groups. These include:

Children who do not have access to a school in their community;
Children at school age not yet enrolled in school, despite the availability of a school;
Children who have never enrolled at a school, despite the availability of a school;
Children who have enrolled but do not attend school (thereby being very likely to drop out);
Children who already dropped out of the education system.

UNESCO Bangkok has organized the Asia Education Summit on Flexible Learning Strategies for Out-of-School Children to discuss and share successful approaches and strategize on new initiatives to reach the millions of youth who find themselves outside Asia’s formal education systems.

The three-day summit provided a unique platform to link those working in the field for the benefit of out-of-school children with potential donors. Many recommendations were presented, among them some to support the Community Based Education:

The role of Community Based Education (CBE) should be strengthens in the National Education Strategic Plan (NESP) this will also give positive signals to the government and outside donors to support these approaches.
A CBE coordination body should be established.
CBE should become an important focus of the new national education coalition.
The government, especially the Ministry of Education must be convinced to have strong cooperation and good relation with NGOs and private sector from this field of intervention.

Important links

Education Agenda 2030 Framework for Action

Education for the 21st Century

Lifelong Learning Systems

Literacy for All