More poor Afghan girls now go to school

Xinhua/Kabul

Despite economic problems and traditional barriers, more and more Afghan girls are now attending classes in their villages to secure their future.

“I am very happy to get education and attend classes in my village,” Najiba, 13, said recently in her school in Qalai Gadar village.

Now in Grade 6, Najiba who like most Afghans go by only one name, said that her father and brothers did not want her to go to school where all the teachers, except for one, are males.

Built by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) with the financial support from Hollywood film star Angelina Jolie in Qalai Gadar, a rural community in Qara Bagh district some 40km north of Afghan capital Kabul, the school is one of the few primary schools providing education to local residents there.

The two-story building, which opened in 2012, accommodates around 400 pupils mostly girls at two shifts from 10 nearby villages.

In this conservative country where tribalism and traditionalism are deeply-rooted and many parents, particularly in rural areas, prefer their girls to stay home, the Qalai Gadar Primary Girl School has defied tradition and welcomes young girls to its classrooms.

Even at her young age, Najiba said she wants to be a medical doctor so that she can help treat her countrymen.

“In the past we studied in open, but today I am happy that I, along with my two sisters and four brothers, are now learning our lessons inside a building,” Yasmin, 14,another student of Grade 6, said.

The majority of the students in the school are the offspring of former refugees who fled the conflict and live in neighbouring states of Pakistan and Iran during Taliban’s six-year reign which collapsed in late 2001.

Although the Qalai Gadar School is offering only elementary education, or up to Grade 6, school headmaster Gul Rahman Ayaz said that efforts are now being made to upgrade the school into a high school.

However, Ayaz said that he is not very optimistic about the outcome of their plan.

“One of our main problems is the extreme scarcity of female teachers here. Presently we have 12 teachers here but only one of them is female and the remaining 11 others are males which creates cultural problem,” Ayaz said, adding that the lack of female teachers is one of the reasons why parents are reluctant to send their daughters to the school.

Located in a slum neighbourhood, the Qalai Gadar Primary Girl School is a suitable education centre for the children of the poor community. But the school lacks flowing water, electricity, textbooks and school supplies, amenities that the poor pupils do not have.

Ayaz said that because of lack of budget, the school could not afford to buy a power generator that could be used to pump water to a water tank.

Some 8.4mn students, 39% of them girls, now go to school in the post-Taliban Afghanistan, according to officials.