Fostering education for female, out-of-school youth in Afghanistan

This paper describes the Afghanistan Primary Education Program (APEP) set up 2003 in response to the lack of educational opportunities in Afghanistan for the general population and especially for females. The main aim of APEP is to offer emergency access to accelerated elementary education for out-of-school youth between ten and eighteen years of age, focusing on females. The paper describes the programme strategies and the significant results achieved for female youth.

The paper concludes that student performance indicates that the APEP AL programme was able to overcome traditional gender inequities for the participating female students, assuring them equitable access and quality of service. Although a high proportion of parents have supported their children by lightening their household burden so that they can go to school, time constraints remain a significant hindrance.

The author recommends that it would be beneficial for the APEP programme to widen the AL curriculum to include a broader spectrum of occupational options, with a special emphasis on technical careers, where skilled workers are needed for economic development, and where education or training takes only 1-2 years, as opposed to lengthy university courses of study in medicine, teaching, or engineering.

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PUBLISHER About: Journal of Education for International Development (JEID)

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