User:GJavetski

About Education in Afghanistan

• UNICEF Country statistics, including Education
• Education in Afghanistan from Wikipedia
• OLPC in Afghanistan
• Notes from Matt Keller'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.

UNICEF in Afghanistan

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's 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.

UNICEF Partnerships in Afghanistan

• Major NGO partners for UNICEF include Save the Children UK and Norway/Sweden, Terre des Hommes, CARE International, International Medical Corps, Merlin etc. In Afghanistan, the education cluster lead is UNICEF and the co-lead is Save the Children US.

• Examples of Past Joint Projects with UNICEF Afghanistan :
  • Education for Afghans Initiative (Save the Children and UNICEF): Multi-agency initiative to develop Basic Competencies of learning in mathematics and language and teaching-learning materials. Save the Children is distributing education materials, conducting a school-awareness campaign, establishing Parent-Teacher Associations and by reconstructing and building schools. Where the buildings are not yet ready for children, Save the Children is helping communities set up temporary tents to house classes.
  • Rewrite the Future(Save the Children and UNICEF): Save the Children has set up many schools in Afghanistan, particularly for refugees who flee into Pakistan. In this case, Save the Children provides teachers, training, and materials while UNICEF provided tents.
  • Thousand School Project (UNICEF and Japanese Government): The Government of Japan has granted $24 million in aid to education in Kabul, which is currently facing a critical shortage of teaching and learning spaces. By its completion in December, the project will have reached 48 schools and benefited over 80,000 children.

Other Education Initiatives in Afghanistan

Education Projects

• Councils in Jurm Valley: small corner of Afghanistan has seen vast improvements by using village councils and direct grants as part of an initiative called the National Solidarity Program, introduced by an Afghan ministry in 2003. Particularly interesting is looking at girls’ education component.
• Swedish Committee for Afghanistan: supports 45 model schools, provides assessment on learning impact.
• USAID has printed over 48.5 million textbooks for grades 1-12 and is reprinting 11 million schoolbooks. Has also launched the Afghanistan Primary Education Project in 2003.
  • Two recent reports from USAID on active learning pedagogies and building education support systems for teachers' projects.
• PAIWASTOON: an Afghan-International company with a focus on developing sustainable solutions to "Make IT Work For Afghanistan." By specializing in open source technology, localization and online applications, PAIWASTOON seeks opportunities for technology to have a positive effect on as many Afghans as possible, as sustainably as possible. Currently working with OLPCon technical implementation of projects.

Afghan Education Resources

• Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR): an organization that serves and facilitates the work of its NGO members in order to address efficiently and effectively the humanitarian and development needs of Afghans.
• Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies {INEE}: an open global network of representatives from NGOs, UN agencies, donor agencies, governments, academic institutions, schools and affected populations working together to ensure all persons the right to quality and safe education in emergencies and post-crisis recovery. Provides great background on education initiatives in Afghanistan.

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.

What I Am Currently Working On At OLPC

• 30 June, 2010: selecting and uploading photos for new Afghan blog posts, continuing to collect research for UNICEF Afghanistan memo.
• 1 July, 2010: created a google reader account, went through and read past blog posts on OLPC's work in Afghanistan, began uploading findings onto wiki account.