PRT ASADABAD: EDUCATION FAILING IN KUNAR

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 KABUL 000973

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

DOD FOR USDP EDELMAN
STATE FOR SCA/FO A/S BOUCHER AND SAS GASTRIGHT, SCA/A,
S/CRS, SCA/PB, S/CT, EUR/RPM
STATE PASS TO USAID FOR AID/ANE, AID/DCHA/DG
NSC PASS TO AHARRIMAN
OSD FOR KIMMITT
CENTCOM FOR CFC-A, CG CJTF-76, POLAD, JICCENT

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL PGOV PTER ASEC MARR AF
SUBJECT: PRT ASADABAD: EDUCATION FAILING IN KUNAR

--------------
Summary
--------------


1. (SBU) Education is a priority in Kunar and provides an
opportunity to engage and influence communities throughout
the province. Elders from every district consistently rate
education -- including girls' education -- as one of their
top priorities, and school buildings among their most
pressing needs. PRT Asadabad has helped improve Kunar's
education infrastructure, making a small contribution to a
large problem. Funding for additional school buildings and
school supplies could generate goodwill among parents and
relatives of school-age children and expand the reach of the
Afghan Government in Kunar. The PRT has a plan to improve
the education infrastructure, but needs far exceed the PRT's
limited resources. END SUMMARY.

--------------
Schools in Tents
--------------


2. (SBU) According to the provincial Department of Education,
Kunar has 313 schools, of which 86 have buildings. The rest
use tents, or the shade of a tree. The education department
claims that there are, in total, 140,000 students enrolled in
Kunar,s schools. While it is difficult to say whether this
number is accurate, the figures do suggest two negative
trends. First, girls attend school in much lower numbers
than boys. Even in primary school, girls account for only
about one-third of all students. Second, school attendance
drops off sharply for boys and girls after primary school.
Boys' attendance in middle school is about 80 percent less
than in primary school, while for girls the decline is even
greater. In a few districts the education department figures
showed no girls enrolled in middle school. Enrollment
figures for high school were unavailable, but the Director of
Education told the PRT that in 2006 just 450 boys graduated
from high school. He expected that this number would
increase to over 800 for 2007. The Education Director
guessed that perhaps 50 of the 2006 graduates would go on to
university outside Kunar.

--------------
Girls' Education Very Limited
--------------


3. (SBU) Only 19 girls graduated from Kunar's high schools in

2006. Of the four girls' high schools, only one has been in
operation long enough to produce a
graduating class and another, the Fatima Girls' School, was
built with PRT funds. In addition to the lack of
school buildings for girls, there are only one hundred
female teachers in the province, woefully short of demand.
The Education Director notes that most of these teachers are
older, trained before the civil war and Taliban government.


4. (SBU) Although girls' education is limited, a recent
attempt to stop it completely did not succeed. In December
four women who worked at a girls' school in Narang District
were murdered at their houses, after receiving warnings to
stop their teaching activities. Ten other female teachers
from the village fled to Kabul following the attack (one
female teacher remained in the village, but is teaching at
home). The Education Director has continued to pay the
salaries of the teachers while they are in Kabul, and is
negotiating their return to work. They condition their
return on the establishment of a police checkpoint near the
school and a new, more secure school building. The Education
Director said better physical security was being arranged,
and the new ANAP would likely establish a checkpoint near the
school. Girls' schools elsewhere in Kunar have not been
affected, and elders from around the province continue to

KABUL 00000973 002 OF 003


press the PRT to build structures so that girls can attend
school separately from boys. A few threats have been made
against schools elsewhere in Kunar in the past year, but no
other schools have been closed by pressure from
anti-government forces.

--------------
Teacher Training
--------------


5. (SBU) Kunar's only post-secondary educational institution,
the Asadabad Teacher Training College, has about 300 students
studying Pashtu, English, Math, Biology, Chemistry,
Geography, and Religion. They hope to add courses in
Physics, History, and Dari. The College takes candidates
with only a High School education, starting them as trainee
teachers for half the day, and students at the Teacher,s
College for the second half. The education director said
that due to the dire need for female teachers, the College
accepts female candidates with only an eighth grade
education.


6. (SBU) The education budget in Kunar is approximately Af 28
million per quarter. Twenty-five million of this is salaries
to the education department's 4,010 employees. The other 3
million is for maintenance, materials, and new construction.
The Education Department reports no problems in receiving the
quarterly payment from Kabul. Each district has an
Education Department finance representative, who takes the
money from the bank in Asadabad and distributes it to the
cashier of each school in his district. The Director said
that there was a plan for each teacher to draw their salary
directly from the bank in their district, but this depended
on the establishment of branch banks in each district.

--------------
English Teaching Weak
--------------


7. (SBU) The PRT's experience has been that most local high
school graduates who claim to speak English do not. English
is taught in public schools for an hour or two each week from
the sixth grade on. No one in the province has sufficient
English language skills to establish teaching standards or to
evaluate teacher performance. There are a few private
English teaching institutes around Kunar, and the Ibn Sina
center in Asadabad. Demand for English skills is high
because such skills make possible the pursuit of educational
and employment opportunities outside Kunar.

--------------
Prospects for Improvement
--------------


8. (SBU) The Director of Education has ideas to improve
education, including establishing scholarships and academic
prize competitions, but lacks funds. The Ministry of
Education plans to establish vocational and teacher training
centers dubbed "Centers of Excellence" in every district, and
to construct fifty new school buildings in every province for
$9 million per province, but it will take time. A Deputy
Minister of Education told the PRT that Kunar, as a "tier
III" province, would have to wait for funding to be allocated
to bigger provinces first.


9. (SBU) USAID has funded the construction of ten schools in
eight districts of Kunar. UNICEF provides
tents for schools and school supplies and has built eleven
school buildings. The PRT has provided school supplies in
several districts. The PRT has also developed and is seeking
funds to implement a Kunar Education Improvement Project,
which will provide improvements to existing schools and will
construct new

KABUL 00000973 003 OF 003


school buildings in each district. The PRT's plan is to
provide $1,000 per school to the seventy oldest of the 86
existing school buildings for renovations (total of $70,000),
$100,000 to buy teachers' supplies for schools throughout the
province, and $150,000 for new furniture for existing school
structures. We would also build one school per district, for
$1.5 million. This would, over the course of a year or more,
help alleviate some of the shortage of school buildings. But
getting classroom space and teachers for a majority of
Kunar,s children will have to wait for the arrival of large
resources from the central government or from foreign donors.

NEUMANN