Contribution of different food groups to caloric intake

70 EDUCATION 8 EDUCATION SUMMARY. The general education picture presented by the NRVA 2011-12 is one of great improvement in the course of the decade preceding the survey. Indicators like adult and youth literacy rates, attendance ratios and gender equity all show signiicant improvement. However, there are also indications that the rate of improvement may have declined compared with the observations of NRVA 2007-08: the largest improvements in primary school attendance were recorded prior to that survey and since then progress has been only modest. The present NRVA suggests that the current rate of improvement for education, literacy and related gender- equity indicators will fail to achieve the ANDS targets by 2020. Despite major achievements in the last decade, education performance in Afghanistan is still among the poorest in the world. Opportunities to attend education are few, especially for girls and women, and rural and Kuchi populations in general, even though the gender gap in education and literacy show continuous improvement, in both absolute and relative terms. The share of the adult Afghan population who have completed any level of education is very small – less than 25 percent, and for women as few as 10 percent. However, major improvements in primary and secondary school completion are observed for the younger age group 15-24 years, especially for girls. This is the result of increasing school attendance in the past decade. The net primary attendance ratios for girls and boys are now 48 and 64 percent respectively, up from 29 and 43 percent in 2005, and 42 and 60 percent in 2007-08. This still means that some 1.2 million girls and over 900 thousand boys are missing out on the opportunity to learn basic life skills. Net secondary attendance ratios are 23 and 42 for girls and boys respectively, up from 10 and 22 percent in 2007-08. Reasons for not attending school differ strongly between places of residence, education levels and the sexes. For girls, cultural barriers are dominant, for boys the need to contribute to family income. The importance of these reasons increases with age. Insecurity and distance to schools are largely reasons for non-attendance in rural areas. No more than around two in ive rural households live within two kilometres of a primary school. Overall net primary school attendance in rural areas is 54 percent, while in urban areas it is 78 percent. With regard to literacy, similar patterns and changes are recorded as for school attendance. The adult literacy rate is 45 percent for men and 17 percent for women. The improvements in literacy between 2005 and 2011-12 are particularly observed in the youth literacy rate, which increased from 20 to 32 percent for female youth and from 40 to 62 percent for male youth. Again, the population in rural areas is at a severe disadvantage: the youth literacy rate there is only 39 percent, compared to 71 percent in urban areas.

8.1 Introduction

Education is one of the most important aspects of human development. The Convention on the Rights of the Child – the most widely ratiied human rights treaty – enshrines the right of all children to a primary education that will give them the skills they need to continue learning throughout life. Yet, a large majority of Afghan people have been denied this right, most of them women and girls. Consequently, they are bereft of many opportunities for personal development and contributions to society. Afghanistan is faced with a huge challenge to recover from thirty years of conlict and political unrest that resulted in the destruction of the Afghan education system in terms of stafing, premises, curricula and student attendance. During the Taliban rule girls were even prohibited from attending schools. Since 2001, a nationwide reconstruction process is being implemented with large support from the international community. This was relected in the results of the NRVA 2007-08, which showed signiicant improvements in the areas of literacy and educational attendance compared to NRVA 2005. The NRVA 2011-12 covered again several components for a situational analysis on education in the period 2011-12. Section 8.2 addresses the present performance of Afghanistan’s educational system by reviewing attendance and non- attendance, and some of their backgrounds. Section 8.3 is dedicated to the accumulated human capital in terms of highest educational levels attained by Afghanistan’s adult population. Finally, section 8.4 provides an assessment of the situation with regard to literacy, being one of the key effects of education. The chapter also presents most of the education-related MDG indicators.