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