The updated map below shows the teachers and countries we will be blogging about.
This week we focus on Afghanistan and a teacher named Nahida.
In a recent EFA (Education For All) global monitoring report an attempt was made to identify which countries lacking data are likely to have more than 1 million children out of school, using estimates of the primary net attendance rate from household surveys carried out between 2008 and 2011. These calculations add six countries to the eight known to have more than 1 million children out of school. Afghanistan is among these.
Despite improvements over the decade, Afghanistan has the highest level of gender disparity in primary education
in the world with only 71 girls in primary school for every 100 boys. It is likely to remain very far from the target of
gender parity in primary education by 2015.
No girls were in secondary school in 1999 in the country. By 2011, the female gross enrolment ratio rose to 34%, which meant there were only 55 girls in secondary school for every 100 boys.
Details in the Gender Summary provided by the UNESCO EFA initiative show that over 100 million young women in low and lower middle income countries are unable to read a single sentence. And 31 million girls are out of school, with half of them unlikely ever to set foot inside a classroom. It provides FOUR main recommendations for supporting education for girls.
No girls were in secondary school in 1999 in the country. By 2011, the female gross enrolment ratio rose to 34%, which meant there were only 55 girls in secondary school for every 100 boys.
Details in the Gender Summary provided by the UNESCO EFA initiative show that over 100 million young women in low and lower middle income countries are unable to read a single sentence. And 31 million girls are out of school, with half of them unlikely ever to set foot inside a classroom. It provides FOUR main recommendations for supporting education for girls.
- Equity must be the focus of new education goals after 2015.
- The best teachers must reach the learners who need them most.
- Teachers need gender-sensitive teacher education.
- Curricula must be inclusive.
Nahida graduated from Kabul university and became a teacher in 1989. She eventually became Principal of an all girl high school in Kabul - where there are more female teachers than in most areas. The school is supported by the French government, has 35-50 students in each class, and runs in 2 shifts each day. Nahida was supported by her government for a unique opportunity to travel to Japan, UK, Germany, South Korea, India and later to Pakistan for training.
Nahida has an important message contained in her story, so I am copying her exact words here:
"In the last period of time when Mujahidin came to power, different portions of Mujahidin started fighting in Kabul and other provinces. Schools closed because of security, especially girls schools. Schools become a target for Mujahidin. Slowly when stability came to Afghanistan and Kabul for me it was priority to encourage girls and their families to come back to school.
I gave the message to their families and asked them to send
their daughters to school again.
Also I made a council of elder people and religious people,
and gave a message to them to help my school. Also I gave a message to the
mosque because you know in Afghanistan, mosques help with all these things to
encourage families and parents to send and to attend the female students to
schools.
Also I asked different NGOs to support us especially getting
uniforms for the girls and school books, and to support orphans and poor
students. All of it was to encourage the families of the female students to
send them to school.
When the Taliban came to power, it was their policy to close
all the schools for females. For me, it was difficult to go to school to teach.
When I went to my school, the principal of the school was a Mullah and he
didn’t allow me to enter the school and asked me after that not to come to
school. But for the boys, school was
open. I was a teacher every day and I
was sad for the girls. When I understood the policy of Taliban was not to allow
girls and female teachers to go to school, I started a home school for girls
because families and their parents asked me to teach their daughters. Families
trust me because I was a well-known teacher in my school. I decided to continue
my job and my responsibility for my people and my female students especially to
help them. It was a very strict time. Very difficult. I was afraid. The home
school was very secret, not official. In one day there were three shifts, two
classes of 25 girls.
It was a very difficult situation because the Taliban was
very strict in their rules.
The Taliban thought I ran a class for the holy Koran – a
religious class but I taught not only the holy Koran, but also all the subjects
that were in school – the complete school curriculum. I did not receive any
salary for this.
Today it has changed. When the Taliban fell and under
Karzai, everything changed. Schools opened for the girls and boys. I was the
first female teacher who went back to my school and organized my school.
When I went to my school I can explain you how, what the condition
was. The school was completely destroyed. The buildings had no windows, no doors.
The surrounding wall of the building of our school was destroyed.
Schools didn’t have any chairs, tables, blackboard, chalk,
totally no school materials because the school was a Taliban location.
When I went to my school first I cleaned the classes with
the help of my female teachers and my labour. I made the surrounding wall in
mud and stones. Fortunately I had taken all of the documents of the school and
they were saved with me in my home. Once again I gave messages to their
families, parents, mosque and asked families to send their daughters for attend
school.
The girls came back slowly, slowly. I encouraged families,
asked their parents to school, encouraged them, talked with them. Also I sent my female teachers to their
homes. I announced it in different mosques. Female teachers started coming back
to school and I started my teaching, and female teachers started teaching
again.
The government and thanks to the support of the
international community, thousands more schools were built not only in Kabul but
in different provinces, and destroyed schools were rebuilt, equipped schools
with chairs, tables, good chairs, good tables.
Also more than 47, 48 different countries which are involved
now in Afghanistan to support different schools in the country, in many
provinces.
Now in Afghanistan, war continues every day. Here there are
suicide attacks, bombs. The insecurity, and instability, is a big challenge for
families, for our people, especially for girls attending the schools. You know,
Afghanistan is a special country with special rules that must be followed by
girls and women. When they want to go to school their parents are afraid about
the lack of security, because suicide attacks happens, there are bombs and bad
events in the city, many female students don’t come to school. For me as a
director of this school, I have organized special transportation for my
students. It’s a good solution to prevent absenteeism of girls from school.
It’s a big problem. You know when a bomb explosion happens
in a city, how will the morale be of the students, especially female students? After
each bad event that happens in our country, it has a very bad impact on their
morale.
When a suicide attack happens, families don’t allow their
girls to go to school for one or two days. Also for boys, but especially for
girls.
In girls school it’s the rule the teacher has to be female.
In my school, which I direct, of the 105 teachers, only 2% are male.
I only need three more female teachers for next year in my
school, but in all Afghanistan it’s the big challenge for education, especially
in the provinces for the girls’ schools. You’re faced with difficulties and
challenges because of the lack of female teachers. Day by day the number of
girls decreases especially in the high grades classes like 10, 11 and 12.
In the provinces especially in the unstable provinces like
the south of Afghanistan the lack of the female teachers causes schools
difficulties. Only in the big cities – the capital – we have in school a high
number of female teachers. The Government and also the Ministry of Education
are planning to do more to educate and hire female teachers, but it is hard to
send teachers to the provinces because of lack of security.
It’s Afghan tradition and our religion doesn’t allow female
teachers to go without their husbands anywhere. In provinces it is possible to
recruit female teachers locally but in unstable provinces, the government is
faced with difficulties recruiting. But in a stable province and in Kabul, we
don’t have any problem about the job of female teachers.
It’s also a big problem especially for all of Afghan
students who have graduated from schools and university to get a job as there
is a lack of jobs. This decreased the number of students.
I am a realistic person and optimistic about our future of
education and learning programmes in Afghanistan. Now our people, after three
decades of war, completely know about the importance of education. People and
families work hard and get money and spend more for their children to learn
English, computers, to go to school. In fact they spend more investing in their
children to go to school – like stationary, uniform.
In Afghanistan now there is big competition
between Afghan families of knowledge and learning. The families are lucky if their children go
to school, if they learn more, graduate from high school and university,
because now they know when a boy or a girl graduates from university he will be
able to work not only in government, but with foreign NGOs and get a good
salary. Good salaries can bring big change, fundamental change in their life. Because
of that I am optimistic about the future of education in our country. One thing
that is more important is that the international community support the future of
education through our Government. Educated people don’t take guns and don’t
destroy their country and their schools."
This blog post is a contribution to Week 3 of #TeacherTuesday, a UNESCO and EFA initiative.
I invite you to also read from my blog:
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