Education in Afghanistan includes K-12 and higher education which is supervised by the Ministry of Education (MoE) and Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE). In the last ten years, with the support from international community thousands of schools have been built.

Nonetheless, a major portion of Afghan population still do not have access to education as there is either no school or the schools have been closed down by Taliban. With all these, on Saturday, 1st September, Ghulam Farooq Wardak, Minister of Education came up with a promise on providing people with access to education.

In press conference he said that by 2014 no village of Afghanistan would be without schools, every child would have access to education and no school would be without teacher. Although the minister seems to be a bit overly optimistic, such a promise gives a somehow hope to those people whose areas are deprived of schools. MoE must act to fulfill its promise as an educated Afghanistan is what we are in dire need of.

After Taliban government was toppled in late 2001, one of the sectors that have significantly progressed is the education sector. Figures pertaining to 2011 show that about 8.2 million girls and boys are attending schools in Afghanistan which is counted a major achievement for this war-torn country.

Since 2002 Afghanistan is going through a nationwide rebuilding process, and despite setbacks due to the ongoing Taliban insurgency the education sector is improving gradually. New educational institutions are established all across the country and more students being enrolled. That is just the beginning.

Afghans have still a long way to go to master in various fields of education to cope well with ever changing world. Despite noteworthy development, Afghanistan's education sector is still facing major problems.

After their government was toppled, the Taliban have intensively tried to prevent Afghans from getting education by acid/gas attacks on students, setting schools ablaze and threatening people to keep their children away from education.  Violence on students have prevented close to 5 million afghan children from attending school in year 2010.

In terms of death rates, Afghanistan had 439 teachers, education employees and students killed in 2006-9, one of the highest in the world. Lingering war in the country forms the biggest challenge for Afghanistan's education sector to move ahead.

At times when the international security forces are set to withdraw completely from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, one of the areas that will suffer the most, if the condition further deteriorates, is the education sector.