Workshop’s main content:

The workshop was first of all to follow up and continue the work of the permanent task force groups and to decide about their action plans in relation to the four key agreed areas for strategic development:

1) Education services including the implementation of national and international standards.

2) The quality and improvement of the teaching and the learning in the class rooms. This includes the professional capacity building the teachers.

3) The analysis and research, to assess the relevant learning needs of young people in different situations at various levels and the e.g. the education needs of the world of work.

4) The financial sustainability of the education programs, either through funding, including the problem of nation funding or through own income. But also the institutional sustainability of the network of Adult Education Centres

During the second part of this workshop most hurting challenges that were recently found out during several monitoring visits in the Adult Education of Kabul and Parwan, as well in the Northern Region were presented and discussed.

In all, 18 urgent organizational challenges were identified at different levels and analyzed. The identified challenges were categorized in five working areas: Learning processes, education marketing, own income also salary payment policy and payment system for teachers, procurement and book keeping in the Education Centres.

Most important actors, like the Head of Education Departments, the Education Managers of the Education Centres from Kabul and Parwan and relevant staff from the programme coordination office in Kabul actively participated in this workshop.

The workshop as usually was very lively and dynamic and conducted in participatory manner; this allowed every participant to contribute actively.

In five working groups, the identified problems were analyzed. Solutions for improvements were discussed and presented. All workshop participants had the opportunity to comment on the presented solutions worked out, bases on their own expertise and experiences. In the next round all comments were taken for consideration and again the groups worked to improve the proposed solutions.

In a final presentation round, a special panel decided during a plenary session to approve the presented solution or whether additional work is needed for final approval.

Some of the accepted solution will now be tested in practice others will directly be implemented.

The same workshop was conducted just some days before for the education programme in the North zones in Mazar-e-Sharif, Balkh province.