Afghanistan - History & Background, Constitutional & Legal Foundations, Educational System—overview, Preprimary & Primary Education, Administration, Finance, & Educational Research - SECONDARY EDUCATION, HIGHER EDUCATION
university enrollment rate universities
| BASIC DATA |
| Official Country Name: |
Islamic State of Afghanistan |
| Region: |
East & South Asia |
| Population: |
25,838,797 |
| Language(s): |
Pashtu, Afghan Persian (Dari), Uzbek, Turkmen, Balochi, Pashai |
| Literacy Rate: |
31.5% |
| Compulsory Schooling: |
6 years |
| Educational Enrollment: |
Primary: 1,312,197 |
| |
Secondary: 497,762 |
| |
Higher: 24,333 |
| Educational Enrollment Rate: |
Primary: 49% |
| |
Secondary: 22% |
| Teachers: |
Secondary: 17,548 |
| |
Higher: 1,342 |
| Student-Teacher Ratio: |
Primary: 58:1 |
| |
Secondary: 28:1 |
| Female Enrollment Rate: |
Primary: 32% |
| |
Secondary: 12% |
Secondary level education (ages 13 to 18) was not compulsory and appeared to be less widely available (if at all) than primary education and nonformal education programs. Although elementary schools were located throughout the country, secondary schools were generally located only in larger cities.
Prior to the war years, Afghanistan had two universities, Kabul University and the University of Nangarhar in Jalabad. Kabul University had been a respected learning center, and its medical faculty was largely responsible for the opening of the University of Nangarhar in 1962. In addition to the two universities, in 1983 there were also seven professional and technical universities.
Additional Topics
The Islamic State of Afghanistan is located in South Central Asia. Afghanistan's population was estimated at 26.7 million in 2000, making it South Central Asia's fifth largest populated country, as well as its fifth largest land area (251,772 square miles). Afghanistan is a land-locked country surrounded by Pakistan and India to the east, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan to the north…
In 2000 Afghanistan did not have a constitution, legislative branch, or legal system. The loosely organized political factions tacitly agreed that they would follow Islamic law through local Shari'a (Islamic) courts. The country's 29 provincial governments bore the brunt of responsibility for maintaining and delivering the limited governmental services intermittently available during war years. Af…
Unfortunately, Afghanistan's system of formal education, like that of its central government, was in complete disarray by the year 2000. Without a national authority overseeing the distribution of educational funds and program implementation, the level of schooling varied greatly across the country. Any sort of national philosophy ensuring pupil participation, in even the most basic schooling, was…
Preprimary education programs were implemented in Afghanistan in 1980. By 1990 the country had 195 centers providing such childcare services. The programs covered children between the ages of three to five. But, by 1999 only one remained open. In effect the 1980's decade of gains in early childhood development program halted and it essentially collapsed. In spite of the uneven distribution of sch…
FINANCE ADMINISTRATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH Given that Afghanistan did not have a centralized educational authority in 2000, no information was available about educational administration or educational research.
Only 3 of the 29 provincial directorates (Kabul, Paktya, and Logar) operated nonformal education programs for the out-of-school population. Twelve of the twenty-five nongovernmental relief agencies operated informal education centers. In combination, the provincial directorates and the relief agencies operated informal education centers in 12 of the 29 provinces in 1999. Both agency and provincia…
According to the World Education Forum (WEF) the teaching profession was considered a low status occupation in Afghanistan society. An appalling fact of the Afghanistan wars was that thousands of teachers were assassinated and even more assaulted by the warring factions. Accordingly, teacher recruitment was extremely difficult, salaries were very low, and teachers were often not paid for their wor…
Even though Afghanistan's policy of free education was compulsory for children aged 7 to 13, only 22 percent of the country's "school-aged" children were actually attending schools in 1996. In 1997 UNESCO estimated that 50.8 percent of males and 80.6 percent of females over the age of 15 were illiterate. The effects of war upon a society are unimaginable to those who have not lived through one. T…
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