/ Programmes / Education

Basic Education

The possibilities for education have always been limited in Afghanistan, where the educational system has been badly damaged after the 3 decades of war. Since the fall of the Taliban regime millions of children have returned back to school, but still many children are denied access to a proper education, especially girls in rural areas of the country.

The UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aims to meet the needs of the world’s poorest countries, all by the target date of 2015. One of the goals is providing universal primary education, to boys and girls everywhere, so they can complete a full course of primary education.
SCA has been able to influence the education sector by sharing knowledge, experiences and lessons learned with other actors, including Ministry of Education (MoE) as one of the main actors, to advocate for children’s, women and men’s rights. SCA´s basic Education programme includes support to model schools (including secondary level i.e. grades 10-12), Girls’ Annex schools (mainly of rimary level) and classes of Community Based Education. To uphold a high quality of the Education Programme, SCA is focusing on extensive teacher training, development of quality indicators, monitoring methods and tools, and school management.

Gender in Education

Future trends demand more emphasis on equality, access and quality in basic education. Afghanistan experiences systematic gender disparities amongst girls and boys in various fields – in enrolment, achievements and completion, in teacher training and career development, in curriculum, learning practices and learning processes. To address this problem SCA´s Education Programme is using a strategy to reach girls in remote rural areas, in 12 different provinces, through mobile teacher training for female teachers, through support to girls annexes combined with boy schools and through efforts to recruit more female teachers.

Civil Society and Partners – Civil Society plays an important in the education sector, as members of the community are involved in the guidance and management of the local schools. The participation from the community makes sure that the school is accountable for its activities and meets the desired criteria of education children. Community involvement in schools increase the likelihood of schools to be better managed, teachers to teach as they should and make the internal environment of the school more conducive to learning.

Community Education Committees (CECs) – The CECs are working as representatives of the communities their main responsibilities are amongst other things; community mobilisation, liaison with parents, raising awareness on the rights of children and girls access to education, maintain close working relations with schools, follow-ups of students attendance. For each SCA supported province there are two CECs established. The CEC consists of at least five members, of whom at least one member must have educational background. The communities select the CEC member in a general meeting and each CEC will select one member as a lead person.