Afghanistan

Humanitarian Need

The drivers of need in the education sector are mainly policy-related (bans/decrees), natural hazard-related (earthquakes and floods), and economic (poverty). Likewise, the sanctions environment continues to restrict donor funding to the public sector, meaning that development gains, which have enabled emergency education responses, are at risk of deteriorating.

The de facto authorities implemented a series of restrictions and bans in the education sector in 2023. In addition to the bans on female UN and I/NGO staff in late 2022 and early 2023, in April, the de facto authorities stopped all community-based education (CBE) activities in Kandahar and Helmand. In June, the de facto authorities issued a verbal decree stopping the implementation of CBE activities by INGOs. Shortly after this, accelerated learning programmes (ALPs) for girls were also stopped in several provinces, including Ghazni, Farah, and Uruzgan, though classes were resumed after advocacy in some provinces. Despite efforts from the Education Cluster, partners and donors, secondary school girls remain out of school for over two years and this number continues to grow with each academic year. According to findings in the WOAA 2023, de facto authority imposed bans are the main barrier preventing girls from accessing education.

Almost two million people are at high risk of floods across the country, while almost 17 million people reside in high-risk earthquake districts in Afghanistan¹. The recent earthquake in Herat in October 2023 left more than 112,000 children (49.5% girls) vulnerable and in need of education assistance. Floods in Maiden Wardak, Nuristan, Kunar, Takhar, Parwan, Ghor and others, also resulted in excessive damage to schools in 2023 and a disruption to learning for thousands of children. In 2024, similar levels of flooding are also predicted, again resulting in learning loss for children.

Poverty has also driven needs in education. According to the WoAA 2023, most households remain below the $US 1 per day poverty line. Under these conditions, education is often deprioritized as families turn to other coping strategies in order to survive. WoAA 2023 found that 21% of boys could not access education because they needed to earn money.

The anticipated returnees from Pakistan and from Iran could also potentially drive needs in areas of migration. The Cluster anticipates that approximately 163,000 returnee children will require assistance to integrate into CBE and public schools. The public system may be unprepared to adequately accommodate these children, thereby putting more pressure on already limited educational resources.

The Education Cluster will therefore prioritize working with boys and girls (6-17) who experience a convergence of risks and barriers including shocks/natural disasters, poverty, and those who are at risk of dropping out of school for the 2024 education response. The education cluster will focus on capacity building and system strengthening of local NGO partners who are expected to carry the CBE caseload in 2024.

Response Strategy

In 2024, the Education Cluster will target 17% of the Cluster PiN, demonstrating a shift to a streamlined response. The expectation is for Basic Human Needs (BHN) partners to cover the difference between the Cluster’s target and the children in need of education interventions, ensuring that no child is left behind.

The Education Cluster’s 2024 priorities are similar to those of 2023, focusing mainly on community-based education (CBE) interventions targeting children who have previously been excluded from education due to different factors including crisis, distance, lack of physical infrastructure or teachers, and/or poverty, among others. Rather than focusing on expansion of CBE to hard-to-reach areas where no public infrastructure exists, the Education Cluster is prioritizing continuity for the areas in which CBE investment has already been made and where children are unable to transition to public schools. In prioritizing available funding, expansion of CBE to additional underserved areas will depend on longer-term pipeline funding through BHN providers. As limited support to the public school system is available, the CBE exit strategy for transition to public schools remains extremely limited; thus, expansion of CBE without targeted investment in public education infrastructure is not part of the 2024 Cluster strategy.

CBE interventions are designed to work within the communities through school management shuras (SMS) established for each CBE to increase the demand for education and prevent negative coping mechanisms brought on by the economic crisis, such as early marriage and child labor. CBE remains a platform for integrated service delivery, including child protection activities, nutrition (school feeding), and explosive ordinance risk education (EORE), among others. CBE also remains a core strategy for enrolling out-of-school girls, as there are low barriers to access to CBE classes, including accelerated learning programmes (ALPs).

The Cluster will also continue coordinating to respond to the sudden onset emergencies through the establishment of temporary learning spaces (TLS) and the provision of teaching and learning materials (TLM) to children affected by emergencies in public school settings where the de facto authorities do not have resources to respond effectively to interruptions in education delivery.

The Education Cluster will continue to use in-kind assistance as the main modality for delivering EiE intervention, drawing on the CBE costing framework. The Cluster will also continue to build on alternative learning modalities including online- offline technology, leveraging lessons learned from COVID -19, to reach children, particularly adolescent girls, who may not have access to physical school.

Targeting and Prioritization

In 2024, the Education Cluster seeks to maximize the investment made in 2023 by maintaining the existing CBE classes and children enrolled in those classes in all 34 provinces. The CBE continuity strategy focuses on fostering foundational and life-saving skills for girls and boys in hard-to-reach areas who would otherwise never have had access to education.

In tandem, the Education Cluster will target the most vulnerable out-of-school children. For its acute response, the Education Cluster will focus on meeting the needs of children in disaster-prone areas and in areas with multiple, intersecting needs data (severity 4 - WoAA 2023), particularly Kandahar, Zabul, Badghis, Ghor, Hirat, and Panjsher.

At minimum, if the Cluster receives 50% of the funding requested, it will be able to conduct all the activities for CBE but will be required to reduce the caseload of shock-affected children enrolled in public school from 600,000 to just 300,000 children.

If the Cluster only receives 25% of the funding requested, the Cluster would only be able to target 400,000 children for CBE interventions instead of the whole caseload of 750,000 children. No support will be provided to the remaining 350,000 children as well as to the entire caseload of shock-affected public school enrolled children, meaning about a million children will be left without any support or access to education.

Quality and Inclusive Programming

According the WOAA 2023, the biggest barrier keeping children particularly girls out of school are the current bans. 55% of respondents stated that the new bans in education are the main barrier keeping girls out of school. The number of secondary school girls out of school continues to rise. An additional 297,155² girls who were in 6th grade in 2023 will have no access to education in the 2023/ 2024 academic year. The Education Cluster will continue to lobby and advocate for all schools, especially secondary schools, to be reopened so that girls have equal opportunities to thrive and contribute economically for the development of this country. Cluster Lead Agencies, UNICEF and Save the Children, other UN agencies (in particular, UNESCO), partners and donors will continue to utilize every opportunity and platform to lobby for the reopening of schools for girls and implement short-term, catch-up programmes that benefit the majority. For the girls that have access to primary education, the Cluster and its partners will monitor and respond to community attitudes regarding girls’ attendance, given the closure of secondary schools for girls.

The Education Cluster and its partners will continue to negotiate for localized access for female monitors to support field activities so as to ensure that female teachers are equipped and supported.

With regards to disability and inclusion, this is an area that the Cluster and its partners are planning and strategizing to improve in 2024. Though some capacity building initiatives and trainings have been offered to partners in 2023, this has not resulted in meaningful change for children living with disabilities. In the 2024 HRP, 3% of persons with disabilities (50% girls) will be targeted. This, however, is an area that requires both the humanitarian partners and the BHN actors to work collaboratively. There are systems strengthening activities which need to be articulated by the BHN actors at the MoE and PED levels to ensure that capacity to work with children with disabilities is built within the system. Humanitarian partners will give short trainings to CBE teachers on how to meaningfully engage with children with special needs and disabilities when they enroll in CBE classes. Provision of assistive devices to enable access will be a collaborative effort between the community, EiE partners, BHN partners and the de facto authorities.

Link to basic services and development programmes

Education remains a primary demand for communities across Afghanistan, a demand which cannot be adequately addressed by humanitarian actors given the short-term nature of education in emergencies interventions. For this reason, several key activities remain outside the scope of humanitarian education response and will be addressed by Basic Human Needs Partners. These activities include school construction / rehabilitation including WASH; public school teacher training and capacity building; school feeding; adult literacy programming, and technical and vocational training.

To adequately bridge the information gap between humanitarian and development, the Education Cluster is an active member of the Education Strategic Thematic Working Group (Ed-STWG) where broader education in development activities are discussed. This has allowed the Cluster to clearly communicate the gaps in programming which BHN partners need to bridge whilst avoiding duplication of interventions carried out by humanitarian actors. For example, the 2023 Earthquake Response in Herat required immediate intervention by EiE partners to quickly get children back to learning in Temporary Learning Spaces whilst the longer-term reconstruction of schools required the assistance and intervention of human needs actors.

Response Monitoring

In 2024, the Education Cluster will improve monitoring through continued access negotiations at a localized level for female monitors to support field activities (Maharam costs have already been included in costing strategy). The cluster will also maximize on third part monitors who can include females as part of their teams while at the same time continuing to work with male monitors who have no access restrictions. Initiatives began in 2023 such as phone-based monitoring with CBE teachers as well as WhatsApp study circles for mentoring and follow-ups will be continued in 2024.

The Education Cluster remains an active member of the AAP; GiHA; CVA and Disability and Inclusion Working Groups and has identified champions for each of these areas. In 2024, focus will be on building the capacity of national NGO in these 5 areas so as to improve the response overall. The sub-national cluster coordinators will help support the capacity building of partners in these areas in collaboration with working group leads. At a programmatic level, the Cluster will continue to respond to the complaints received through AWAAZ. Cluster partners will continue to seek the views of the community through active engagements with Shuras (Community Councils) who also include women members. Refresher training on PSEA will be conducted at sub-national level to ensure that even the partners that do not participate at a national level are aware of their obligations and responsibilities in preventing sexual exploitation and abuse.

The Cluster continues to benefit from a positive working relationship with the de facto MoE and keeps relevant departments apprised of ongoing monitoring and assessment activities, including mediating with partners where required. Coordination with central and provincial MoE counterparts remains key to ensuring an effective response with minimal access bottlenecks.

PiN Calculation Methodology

Based on the population data provided by OCHA for 0–18-year-old children segregated by boys/and girls the cluster did a calculation to find out the % of 6–17-year-olds which was 66.67 percent and applied this % to get the 6 to 17 age group. Hence the total population of children (6-17 years) is 15,449,142 (boys 7,695,801 and girls 7,753,340).

To identify the People in Need (PiN) a severity analysis was done based on the following indicators: (Access to education i.e., enrollment or regular attendance), Learning conditions, Protected environment, Aggravating individual circumstances and extremely aggravating individual circumstances.

Based on the identified severities the weighted average per province and district levels were calculated. Also, the segregation of Rural Vs Urban levels was maintained. The total number of children falling in severity 3-5 was then considered for the number of children in need (PiN). Total PiN for Education is 8,030,371 (Boys 3,998,620; Girls 4,031,751).

The Education Cluster relied mainly on the following data sources to estimate the needs for the sector: 2023 Whole of Afghanistan data; UNICEF Census 2023 data; and 5W Dashboard. The key indicators used to elaborate on the integrated needs for education in different parts of the country relate to access to education and attendance rates.