A Voice For the Voiceless

MISSION

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

The One Year Mark

DECEMBER 2004

Godah School, Wardak province (student population: 111)
Noor Khel school, Wardak province (student population: 246)
Zahra primary school, Jalalabad (student population: 197)

During the week of December 25, Ms. Basiri visits Jalalabad to talk to officials from the Directorate of the Ministry of Education about registering the Fatima Zahra school. It becomes clear that the Ministry’s priority is to rebuild and reequip damaged schools rather than register new ones.

Zarifa, age 10, a girl at the Godah School. 

Abu Zahid the Deputy Director of the Directorate, gives Ms. Basiri a briefing on education in Jalalabad and the province of Nangrahar. Nangrahar has 174 primary schools (145 for boys and 29 for girls), 158 secondary schools (149 for boys and nine for girls) and 52 high schools (46 for boys and six for girls). No fewer than 163 schools – including 24 girls’ schools - are in urgent need of repair. The students are taking classes under trees, without any shelter. It is not surprising that the government wants to focus on existing schools. But the Fatima Zahra school also shows that the need is great in communities which had no government schools at the end of the war.

Mr. Zahid offers Ms. Basiri no encouragement. He makes it clear that the Fatima Zahra school cannot be registered as long as the nearby government school is serving returning refugees, and that it will be at least three years before they know whether the refugees plan to stay there permanently. Mr. Zahid explains that the government would be happy to accept the transfer of Fatima students into government schools, but that it cannot provide financial support for a school that is not in the center of the refugee camp.

Mr. Zahid suggests a compromise to Ms. Basiri: Omid continues to supports the Fatima school while also taking on another school in the province which is badly in need of help. This compromise is acceptable to Ms. Basiri because it is so important to work with the government. Still, it means that Omid will have to support four schools on a budget that was originally meant to support three.

Success! The majority of girls pass their final exams. 

Trilli Girls School, Jalalabad

The government wants Ms. Basiri to visit a girls’ primary school of Trilli, in the district of Chapar Har. Trilli has had a boy’s school for 18 years, but the girl’s school only opened three years ago after large numbers of refuges returned from Iran and Pakistan following the fall of the Taliban. The school has 335 girl students in grades one to four and is badly need of support. Ms. Basiri finds children sitting in the sand as they take lessons. The families have tried to get the school registered by the government, but so far without success. At present it is being run on a voluntary basis by men who are teaching at boys’ schools.

This need not happen

There are educated women in the area who taught in Iran and Pakistan and could teach here. Ms. Basiri also concludes that there are also facilities for expanding the girls’ school. There is an open space next to the boys’ school, and three empty rooms which could easily serve as an office for teachers and also school rooms for older girls. Other classes could be held in the yard, or next to the campus in tents. The only real obstacle is money.

Community relations

Ms. Basiri meets with the community of Chapar Har. She finds the families very enthusiastic. If Omid can provide money for a new school house, they promise to find the land and provide free labor to build it.

Based on her visit, Ms. Basiri estimates that the current needs of the Trilli girl’s school are as follows: a salary for six female teachers; five black boards; five black board stands; six chairs for teachers; one desk for the principal’s office; four large tents; and stationary. Omid already has two large tents, and will need to buy only two more. It has some stationary brought by Ginny and Sarah, the two AP interns.

Ms. Basiri is very keen to support this school and also continue supporting the Fatima Zahra School. She feels that her budget will permit this, since it includes the salaries for 14 teachers in 2004. She is also confident that she can find additional money to cover the costs of the Fatima Zahra School for next year. This is something that she will now discuss with her friends, including AP.

Ms. Basiri visits the Fatima Zahra school and meets with teachers. She learns that they do not have attendance books, but are using attendance sheets which are more easily mislaid and do not give a comprehensive picture of absenteeism. As a result, there is no data on attendance. Ms. Basiri suggests that the teachers use books, instead of sheets.

Wardak

Ms. Basiri visits Noor Khel and Godah in December, to meet with the principals and teachers. December 9 was the last day of the academic year in the cold regions, including Wardak, and the final exams at Godah and Noor Khel were taken in November. During the first week of December teachers marked the exams and prepared result sheets for students. They also assigned homework for the students, for them to complete during the three-month winter break. The children have grown so attached to the chairs that they have written their names in the wood and want to take the chairs home for the winter break. Ms. Basiri decides that it would require too much effort to retrieve a hundred chairs from the houses before school and turns down the request. 

Government Relations/ Registration

The Godah school is now registered! On December 4, 2005, Ms. Basiri meets with Mr. Khosal from the Ministry of Education in Kabul. The Ministry can confirm that it has received the profile of the Godah teachers, as requested, and that the Godah school is now registered. In March, the Ministry will tell Omid if the government is allocating any funds to the school, once it learns how much money the Ministry is receiving from the Ministry of Finance.

Exams

The results of the exams, using the Ministry’s guidelines, show that 81 percent of the Godah students passed and 19 percent failed. This is worse than the results for the mid-term exams in September, when 9 percent failed. But the grades of those who passed this time around are roughly the same. Twenty-two percent of the students passed with an excellent grade, compared with 28 percent in September; 29 percent are graded as good (34 percent ); and 30 percent fair (29 percent ).

The exam results at Noor Khel have been better than the mid-terms. 95.5 percent of the girls passed the exams (compared to 96 percent in September); 28 percent of the students were given an excellent grade (26 percent ); 46 percent good (43 percent ); 21.5 percent average (27 percent ) and 4.5 percent failed.

Students from Godah School

These exam results pose a challenge for Omid. Under the government policy, students from the first and second grades who fail exams can nonetheless be promoted to higher classes so as to ensure that more girls receive an education. But this seems unsatisfactory. The teachers and Ms. Basiri postpone the discussion until after the winter break, in March.

It is also agreed that a meeting will be held in the first week of March with teachers and principals from both schools to address five important issues which have emerged during the first year:

• The strengths of the teaching and administration;
• Weaknesses;
• Ways to improve;
• Absenteeism and strategies for coping with it;
• The exam failure rate, and ways to deal with it.

Ms. Basiri receives many requests and suggestions from the teachers during this visit. Some complain that they are not being paid on time. It also appears that some registered schools in rural areas are not receiving government benefits which are provided by international donors. Ms. Basiri promises to pass the message on to the Ministry offices in Wardak, Jalalabad, and Kabul.

The principal at Noor Khel principal asks for the following support for 2005: Salaries for three new teachers and the principal; school uniforms and schoolbags for the new enrolled students (estimated at 50); 12 chairs for teachers; five new black boards for classes; and 10 black board stands for classes.

Networking

On December 12, Ms. Basiri meets in Kabul with Mr. Suliman Director of Cooperation for Peace and Unity for CPAU, a local NGO based in Kabul. CPAU has expressed an interest in conducting peace education training workshops in the Godah and Noor Khel schools. CPAU is offering to provide training at both schools free of charge during the next academic year (2005). CPAU will provide training manuals to teachers and students. Once the teachers are trained they will prepare a plan to train students.

It is now time for the winter break. Classes will resume in March.