User:GJavetski

Preliminary Research on UNICEF/other Partnerships in Afghanistan

About Education in Afghanistan

• UNICEF Country statistics, including Education
• Education in Afghanistan from Wikipedia
• OLPC in Afghanistan
• Notes from Matt's OLPC blog post about visiting Afghanistan:
  • Half (52%) of primary school aged children are enrolled in school. Still, 50% of Afghan girls and 40% of boys don't attend school.
  • In 2001, 800,000 children attended school compared to 7 million today.
  • Schools must operate in “shifts,” the average being three shifts per day meaning that each child generally received only 2.5 hours of school a day.
  • Teacher student ratios are often as high as 1:50-75
  • Afghan children receive only about half of OECD recommended average school times.
  • Close to 75% of teachers in Afghanistan are illiterate or have an education level of one year greater than the students they teach. **Building more schools, training teachers, providing materials would require 6 fold increase to education (over 1 billion a year) and would take 10-15 years.

What Programmatic Areas Is UNICEF Afghanistan Focusing On?

• Child labor: In Afghanistan, 30% of all Afghan children are child laborers.To combat this, UNICEF is setting up drop-in centers where child laborers are able to learn in classroom settings.
• School attacks:In the last two years, many Afghan girls have been forced to leave school following attacks, which have more than doubled on all girl schools. Although to a lesser degree, school attacks are also launched on all boys schools. While UNICEF is creating community-based schools to put more girls in the classroom, it is not clear whether they are helping girls continue their learning following such attacks. This is particularly interesting since they have a comprehensive “Classroom in a Box” concept for students following natural disasters, but not for attacks.
• Female education access & literacy: UNICEF is promoting community-based schools and is teaching community management committees about the importance of girls’ education and their role in making it happen.
• Child friendly curricula: UNICEF is making strides in promoting “child friendly curricula” throughout schools in Afghanistan. This model, which has been implemented in more than 50 countries, utilizes curricula that are specifically inclusive and gender-sensitive.

UNICEF Afghanistan Priorities

1.“Starting from 2010 the enrolment of girls in primary schools, will be increase by 20 per cent resulting in 2.64 million girls being enrolled in school by the end of 2013. 60 per cent of girls enrolled in grade 1 during 2009 reach grade 5 of the education cycle (or 210,000 girls complete grade 5 in 2013) through improved quality of teaching and learning.” 2.“30% of all primary schools will be child-friendly or 3,300 schools practicing child friendly principles.” 3.“Literacy rates among females aged 15-24 years will be increased by 50 per cent, through expansion of literacy centers.”

About Me

My name is Gillian Javetski and I am an intern at OLPC's Cambridge office this summer. I am a senior at Tufts University, where I am double majoring in international relations and community health. I took this past semester off to work at the United Nations Development Programme's HIV/AIDS unit in Geneva. At OLPC, I will be conducting research on UN and international partnerships.