Gender equity indicators percent percent

81 EDUCATION

8.4.2 Change in literacy levels

The pattern of change in literacy rates ratios is consistent with the inding of the change in net attendance rates over time section 8.2.2. Even though literacy rates in Afghanistan are very low, successive NRVAs showed signiicant improvement. This improvement is most visible in young cohorts that reached an age where literacy education is completed. Thus, the MDG indicator of the youth literacy rate shows more than 50 percent increase in the rate between NRVA 2005 and NRVA 2011-12 for both males from 40 to 62 percent and females from 20 to 32 percent Figure 8.7. This implies a steady continuation of the improvement in literacy that was found in the previous NRVA. Figure 8.7: Youth literacy rate, by sex, and by survey year in percentages 40 53 62 20 24 32 31 39 47 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 NRVA 2005 NRVA 2007 -08 NRVA 2011 -12 Ma le Fema le Both sexes The adult literacy rate – referring to the population 15 years of age and older – has also increased, from 26 percent in 2007-08 to 31 percent in 2011-12 data not shown. The observed increases for this indicator for the male and female population are, respectively from 39 to 45 and from 12 to 17 percent. These igures imply that the targets deined in the Education Strategic Plan 2010-2014 by the Ministry of Education for 1393 2014 MoE 2010 – 48 percent overall literacy, and 54 and 43 percent for males and females respectively – are beyond reach. Figure 8.8 similarly indicates an improvement in educational performance in the decade before the survey, thereby continuing and conirming the analysis made in the NRVA 2007-08 report CSO 2009, p. 66. Educational improvement is suggested by the increase of literacy rates in younger age groups at the left of the graph, an effect that is most clear for women. For all women aged 30 and over the literacy rate is below 10 percent, indicating that during the years in which they were in their school age educational opportunities were very poor. The up-turn that can be observed for women in their late twenties, which continues for each successively younger age, relect the opening-up of the opportunity to enter the formal education system after the remove from power of the Taliban regime in 2001. 4 For the youngest age group with age around 12, 45 percent of girls is able to read and write and around 65 percent of boys is able to do so. 4 The age location of the up-turn in the late 20s is due to the combined effect of girls entering education at an advanced age, the application of ive-year moving averages in the graph and age misreporting. 82 EDUCATION Figure 8.8: Literacy rate, by sex, and by age; Gender equity, by age a 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 Age Ma le Fema le Ma le-fema le difference Fema lema le litera cy ra tio a The series in this graph present ive-year moving averages. The changes in educational opportunities since 2001 directly affected the gender equity indicators. Although both girls and boys beneitted from improved access to school, the relative impact for the former was much greater. As can be seen in Figure 8.8, the ratio of female-to-male literacy sharply increases from just over 20 percent for persons around 30 years old who were too old to effectively beneit from the change to over 70 percent for children around age 12. In absolute terms, the gap between the male and female literacy rates shows a narrow variation band between 30 and 35 percentage points from older ages up to around age 21. Here, also the absolute gap starts to decrease from 35 percentage points to below 20 around age 12. The basic message of these igures is that in recent years a large improvement must have been achieved in primary education, and that, relatively, girls beneitted more than boys and have begun to catch up with them. In no previous living generation has the gender gap for literacy been so small.