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.