Afghan officials do not miss any opportunity to boast of the progresses achieved after Taliban regime in the education sector. The achievements in this sector have been always used as a measurement for the scale of the development of Afghanistan since 2001. Despite the progresses, Afghanistan is still one of the countries where many school-age children have no access to schooling. According to the UN Children’s agency (UNICEF), a large portion of the children living in conflict zones are deprived of schooling, with Afghanistan the fourth worst-affected countries after South Sudan, Niger and Sudan. A staggering 40 percent of school-age children in Afghanistan are out of school, the UNICEF says. “When children are not in school, they are at an increased danger of abuse, exploitation, and recruitment into armed groups,” said Jo Bourne, UNICEF’s head of education. The report is coming after conclusion of a government investigation over large-scale corruption in  development of education sector.

With the foundation of the current political establishment in 2001, education sector was envisaged as one of the key backbones for long-term development of Afghanistan. The Afghan government and the international community hoped that development of the education sector would serve for the long-term transformation of the country and help the Afghans get out of poverty and misery. Proper schooling of the young generation would help a transition from conflict and instability to peace, welfare and stability. As the UNICEF’s head of education put, “School equips children with the knowledge and skills they need to rebuild their communities once the conflict is over.” However, the protracted conflict in Afghanistan deprives a large portion of the Afghan under-age children to go to school, and fails the government’s long-term development objectives.

Though that education is one of the least funded sectors in conflict-zone countries, millions of dollars has been spent on  education sector in last fifteen years of international funding of the Afghan government. A considerable portion of the international aid funneled for development of key public and government sectors in Afghanistan was spent for development of the country’s education sector. No need to say that Afghanistan’s education sector has been drastically changed since the fall of the Taliban with over eight million children enrolled now in schools. The education sector in Taliban-era was almost non-existent. However, there is a wide gap between the quality of the Afghan education system and the global standards. Due to the protracted violence and the lagging development efforts, Afghanistan’s education sector is still classified as one of the least development among those of other countries.

In addition to the vast number of children deprived of the required schooling, Afghanistan’s education sector and the efforts for development of the sector suffer major shortcomings and challenges. The most serious challenge of the sector is that is still far away from being modernized. There have been inconsistent efforts in syncing the Afghan system with the global experiences of education. For instance, there is no use of technology in administration and teaching matters in the vast majority of the schools across the country. While modernized education systems in the world are highly equipped with up-to-date administrational capabilities, educational materials and other digital equipment, the schools in Afghanistan use outdated and inefficient methods of administration and teaching. The efforts to computerize/digitalize some administrational affairs of the schools and the education departments across the country have been limited and ineffective.

Lack of skilled personnel is even more challenging for the education sector in Afghanistan. Despite sustained efforts to train skilled teachers and other staff for serving in the thousands of schools across the country, there are schools still operating with incapable and incompetent staff and teachers.

There are schools in rural areas of the country where the teachers themselves have no proper schooling, set aside having professional training for teaching a specific school subject. There are school teachers whose level of literacy are below grade twelve of school and have no skills in any specific areas of the school subjects. However, there are other factors too involved in the lack of trained school teachers. Most of trained school staff and teachers receive a low wage and other financial advantages with which they are not happy, while other untrained teachers and staff receive the minimum wage compared to the salary scale of public servants in the country. This is highly discouraging for more trained and capable individuals in serving in the education sector.

Insecurity is another key challenge to education sector. This will inevitably remain in place as long as the conflict continues to exist and the insurgent groups target the education establishments along with other government and public institutions. Due the prolonged conflict in the country, a considerable portion of the Afghan children and youths are deprived from their basic educational rights. The officials at the Ministry of Education believe that insecurity, poverty and ‎traditions in the country have deprived three out of 11 million children from getting education in the country. According to Mujib Mehrdad, the spokesman of the Ministry of Education, “in some parts of the country, we have witnessed that schools are open but children are not going to school – due to different reasons”. As the UNICEF’s figures show, many of the 40 percent out-of-schools children continue to be deprived of having access to education to the direct impacts of wars and violence or the consequences of the conflict such as displacements, poverty and threats of conservative groups. Poverty is also one of the key factors in failing families to send their children to schools, while the conservative culture and traditionalism to all parts of the country to some extent is also a factor behind the high rate of children being out of school.

In the meantime, like many other sectors and public institutions, the education sector is also undermined by corruption. The UNICEF report is coming shortly after conclusion of an official probe over extensive misuse of the international funding in Afghanistan’s development of education sector. The probe conducted by the Afghan government found many ghost schools receiving funds while there is no staff or students, or the number of staff and students are fabricated. The issue highly brings the last decade achievements of Afghanistan’s education sector under question. The existing challenges to the education sector underscore the need for the national unity government to take actions in addressing the challenges in the sector.