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The Advocacy Project seeks to help community-based advocates produce, disseminate and use information, and so become more effective advocates for human rights and social justice

Resources > Global Issues > Afghanistan's... > Educating Afghani... > The Omid Schools > First Exams

First Exams

SUMMER 2004

Godah School, Wardak province (student population: 114)
Noor Khel school, Wardak province (student population: 246)

Moving into Jalalabad

As a general strategy, The Advocacy Project has advised Ms. Basiri to use her grant on improving the quality of education in a small number of schools, and then promote the model. This way, she will be able to reach many more girls than those attending her schools. She agrees, but also feels that she needs to be operating in at least three schools to be able to develop a useful model. Preferably, they should be in different regions.

Khalida, age seven, one of the girls at the Godah School

Since deciding against investing in the Paghman school, she has turned her attention to a village near Jalalabad, where the community has re-opened a school that had been registered several years earlier but closed. The school is now called Fatima Zahra.

Jalalabad, which lies on the main road between Kabul and Peshawar in Pakistan, is very different from Wardak. The climate is much hotter, as a result of which schools close in the summer. In addition, many refugees have returned here after living for years in Pakistan. They tend to be better educated and less conservative than the villagers in Wardak, who have been less exposed to foreign influence. A program here would make an interesting contrast with Wardak.

In March 2004, as a gesture of support to the Fatima Zahra school, Ms. Basiri left off black boards, rugs, text books and other stationary which had been given to Omid by the US-Afghan Reconstruction Committee. She offered to help the school by paying for the salaries of the principal and two teachers when the academic year begins on September 2.

The principal at the Fatima Zahra Jalalabad school is excited at the prospect. He would also like to enroll students in grade 5. He says that there is a great need for education here because many Afghans have returned to Jalalabad from Pakistan, and their education was interrupted because of repatriation. But he is finding it difficult to register his school with the school with the Directorate of Ministry of Education in Jalalabad. This is important, because without registration the school will not receive government support.

One of the few: Female teachers are hard to find in Afghanistan.
The Director of Education tells the principal that he is unwilling to register the Fatima Zehra school, but that he would welcome Khelp in putting up a school in Khogyani, which is one of the strictest districts in Nangrahar. This would be difficult for Omid. Ms. Basiri is certainly happy to help in areas which do not have a girls’ school, including Khogyani. But Omid has also developed several other criteria, some of which do not apply to Khogyani. Omid’s schools must be:

• Based at the provincial level, and not in Kabul;

• In provinces or districts where there is no school within seven kilometers, and where there are at least 350 inhabitants (according to the Ministry requirements);

• In communities which are “pro-girls education.” This is decided on the basis of meetings with the local community;

• In communities which are ready to accept responsibility for the security of girl students, teachers and a school;

• In communities where there are teachers (male or female)

Khogyani does not qualify under several of these criteria. In addition, the area is considered too dangerous for even experienced international and local NGOs. For all these reasons, Khogyani is unsuitable.

As a result, Ms. Basiri decides that she will return to Jalalabad on October 16, for a discussion with the provincial Director of Education. She wants to ask him several questions. Why did he not agree to register the Jalalabad school? What alternative education is available for the students? What will be the reaction of the school principal and teachers if the school is not registered and what will their future be? What will happen to the students? When did the refugees repatriate and what are the current and future estimates for repatriation to the province? Why is Khogyani province important and what kind of assistance would the government provide if Omid decides to work in the area?

Ms. Basiri will report back with some answers in her next report after visiting Jalalabad. She is beginning to feel that her own lack of personal connections in Jalalabad will make the work more difficult. She writes: “My personal feeling is that in Afghanistan work is easier to do if one is well known in the area and has an influential role. I personally do not have any problems working with the Godah and Noor Khel schools since I belong to Wardak. All community and local authorities respect us. There is mutual understanding and respect. In Jalalabad, however, I am a social/development worker only and do not have an influential role. So I face problems. 

“My personal feeling is that in Afghanistan work is easier to do if one is well known in the area and has an influential role.”

“It would also be easier to work if there was a stable government and all provincial level governors respected the central government. It will take years to have strong government in the country, although it is certainly still possible to work in the current situation. We need to hire someone as a supervisor from Jalalabad, who has influence in the community and with the local authorities.”

Godah

Community relations: Omid had planned to organize a meeting with the Mullahs of Godah to discuss the school, but it has been postponed by security concerns. The meeting is scheduled for after October 30 once the results of the presidential elections are known.

In September, Ms. Basiri visits Godah to meet with the Godah community. The main concern is that classes were taking place in tents, and in two different places. The villagers do not like their children being taught in tents, and in order to receive registration from the Ministry, the two sets of classes need to be in the same place. Ms. Basiri talks to the elders in the village, and to parents, and they agree to hold all the classes in four tents in the same location. This will make it possible to use the 100 chairs which have been donated to the school by the US-ARC. They could not be used up to now because there is insufficient room in the mosques.

However, it is difficult to find space for the tents. The region is mountainous and all flat areas are taken up by cultivation. As a result, it is suggested that a field be rented until the community can come up with a common space.


Despite its receptiveness to the education of girls, Wardak remains a deeply conservative province with regard to women’s rights. 

Education/Exams: Exams have just been held in Wardak province in accordance with the government regulations. 91percent of the girls in Godah school passed: 28 percent were marked as excellent, 34 percent good, and 29 percent fair/average. Nine percent failed. In Noor Khel the result was even better. Ninety-six percent of the girls passed the tests. Twenty-six percent were excellent, 43 percent good and 27 percent fair/average. Four percent failed.

Teachers: One reason for the successful exams is that teachers were prepared. Ms. Basiri has held three meetings with teachers at the two schools in September. Among the issues discussed were registration of the schools and the exams. Teachers were asked to prepare test questions and submit them a week before the test to the principal for review. The teachers also pointed out that attendance sheets are easily lost and make it hard to follow absenteeism trends. They ask that the sheets be replaced by attendance books and also asked for notebooks in which to plan lessons.

Absentees: The student body in Godah has increased from 102 in the spring to 114 this month. The teachers had predicted that some students might leave the school either temporarily or permanently when the classes moved from two locations into one.

Curriculum. In grades 1 to 3, five subjects are being taught. These are Pashtu (language), Math, Holy Quran, writing, and drawing. One more subject is being added in grade 4, namely Dinyat-Islamic studies. In grade 5 and 6 the students take three more subjects: Afghan History, Geography, and Social Science. The lessons vary, depending on the subjects. Students are expected to complete one chapter every month, and are tested at the end of each month.

Government relations

During the last two months, Ms. Basiri has held several discussions with senior members of the new Afghan government. The government is using the process of registration – schools and organizations - to impose its authority on the many NGOs working in education, and ensure that they all support the same curriculum. This is essential if Afghanistan is to have a national education system. But at the same time, it is important to take advantage of the energy and resources that NGOs can offer.

School registration

The first request to register the Godah school was submitted to the Ministry of Education in early March 2004. Ms. Basiri then followed up by meeting with a senior official from the Ministry to see whether the request had been processed. But the Ministry said it had never received the request. The request should have been sent on by the directorate of education in Wardak to the Ministry in Kabul. As a result, Ms. Basiri and her colleagues had to go through the whole exercise again. As a first step it is decided that the Godah school principal will contact the Wardak directorate. Ms. Basiri will take on the task of working with the Ministry in Kabul. The request is redrafted and sent to the Directorate in Wardak.

NGO registration

Ms. Basiri is also seeking to register Omid as an organization with the government. She recently met with Mr. Ahmad Mushahed, the Minister of Education, after he delivered a speech in which he spelled out government policy towards NGOs. The government wants all national and international NGOs to work in a group or “cluster” of four or five provinces rather than scattered across the country. This will make it easier for the government to coordinate its work with that of the NGOs, and it makes Ms. Basiri and her board wonder if she should be focusing on provinces near Wardak. She decides to wait until she has met with the Director of education in Jalalabad.

On September 16 Ms. Basiri meets with Mr. Mushahed to inquire further about the Ministry’s policy for NGOs working in education. The Ministry has drawn up a 12-year plan, which has yet to be made public. The plan seeks to focus on three goals: the construction of new schools and the reconstruction of damaged schools; finalizing a national curriculum; and organizing teacher training programs.

In addition

No school should be closer than seven kilometers from another school; a school should not be built in a village with less than 350 inhabitants; villagers should decide on the location for the school; there should be at least 10 students in each class, and no more than 100 (although the maximum number is a bit unclear); the Ministries of Education and Reconstruction and Development should both approve the location of any new schools; all schools should use the curriculum of the Ministry of Education.

On September 7, Ms. Basiri meets in Kabul with Mr. Ramazan Bashar Doost, the Minister of Planning. Mr. Bashar Doost was appointed in June, and one of his jobs is to coordinate the registration of NGOs. He is clearly no friend of NGOs. He tells Ms. Basiri: “There are almost 3,000 NGOs working in Afghanistan and there is not one I can trust!” He also says that new NGO legislation would be made public in three weeks time.

Ms. Basiri decides that if it becomes too complicated to change the name, her organization will retain the name of Human Relief Foundation.

Networking

On September 25, Ms. Basiri meets with Momina Yari and Amina Afzali, from the Gender-Based Violence Working Group, which operates under the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). Ms. Basiri has been a member of the gender based violence campaign member since January 2004. The purpose of the meeting is to see who is working on child trafficking and abductions, and the answer seems to be the International organization of Migration (IOM).

The European Union has allocated four million euros to work on social and domestic violence, and it is suggested that awareness trainings should be conducted in schools, since most of the children were abducted from the way to school or home. These would be conducted by local Afghan organizations working on peace education, who could conduct trainings for parents, teachers, university and school students in the provinces. The EU requires that the organizations first conduct surveys on violence in families, and then design curriculum for teaching. Based on this, Ms. Basiri has contacted a group called Cooperation for Peace and Unity. If they were interested in submitting an application, they would include the Omid schools in training.

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