Introduction Literacy - Household shocks and community preferences 109

Education 67 Figure 7.1a Male literacy rates, by province Figure 7.1b Female literacy rates, by province Figure 7.2 Literacy indicators, by age and sex a a Based on 5-year moving averages. A further breakdown by residence shows that the gain of girls relative to boys is larger in urban than in rural areas. Here, in recent years the absolute literacy rate gap narrowed from 32 to 16 percentage points and literacy of young girls is 85 percent of that of boys corresponding to literacy rates that rise from 31 to 63 for girls, and from 63 to 80 for boys. The rural absolute gender gap across ages is more or less the same at around 30 percentage points, indicating that the increasing number of children attending school are made up of equal numbers of girls and boys. However, in relative terms, also in rural areas girls gain on boys, as the ratio of literacy rates rise from 13 to 51 percent corresponding to literacy rates that rise from 4 to 31 for girls, and from 13 to 51 for boys. In the Kuchi population, improvements are small, resulting in extremely low literacy rates for the youngest girls and boys at, respectively, around 10 and 20 percent. Of the altogether 9.5 million illiterate adult people in Afghanistan, 5.5 million or 58 percent are women and 4.0 million or 42 percent are men. The absolute gap of 1.5 million could be interpreted as the number of women who should be made literate to achieve at least equality between the sexes.

7.3 Participation in school

Whereas literacy rates reveal past performance of the education system, enrolment ratios indicate the present capacity of the system to enroll students. The net enrolment ratio shows the extent of participation in a given level of schooling of children belonging to the official age-group corresponding to that specific level of education. The net primary enrolment ratio is another MDG indicator to monitor progress towards the goal of achieving universal primary education see Box on MDG Indicator 2.1. Primary education provides children with basic reading, writing, and mathematics skills, along with an elementary understanding of such subjects as history, geography, natural science, social science, art and music. Education 68 MDG Indicator 10: The ratio of literate women to men, 15–24 years old The ratio of the female literacy rate to the male literacy rate for the age group 15–24 measures progress towards gender equity in literacy and learning opportunities for women in relation to those for men. The index is also a key indicator of empowerment of women in society, as literacy is a fundamental skill to take control of one’s life, to engage directly with authority and to gain access to the wider world of learning. In the revised list of official international MDG indicators, this index has been removed, but it still figures in the Afghanistan National Development Strategy. The value of the indicator at national level is 45 percent, an improvement up from 37 percent in the NRVA 2005 and 34 percent in the MICS 2003. The corresponding figures for the urban, rural and Kuchi populations are, respectively 71, 31 and 39 percent.