Friday March 29, 2019
Kabul (BNA) The country’s ministry of education has started launching a poll, through which schools’ students could be graded from grade one to 12. According to the spokeswoman of the ministry, Nooria Nazhat said, the ministry has recently launched the poll to categorize students of schools all over the country. She said, after completion of the survey, students would be categorized to A, B and C levels. “Students scored 90 to 100 would be graded A, students with 75 to 90 would be categorized B, and those between 50 to 75 can access D, while students below 50 have to remain in the class next year, which is called {school repetition},” said the spokesperson.
The plan has been made to encourage the students to study hard and improve their knowledge level, according to the official. According to her, the ministry has numerous policies on hand for the 1398 school year to improve education in the schools, including prevention of violence against children and women, participation of people in the education and monitoring students and popularization of reading culture. She said over 200,000 students graduated from schools, last year. More than one million children have enrolled in schools, while some 3. 7 million children, including girls were still out of school across the country. The reasons, she said was insecurity, heinous traditions and poverty.
Some 400 schools are closed in Ghazni, Helmand, Paktia, Paktika, Zabul, Kunduz and some of Kandahar districts, said Nazhat who added the ministry was committed to reopen them in cooperation with local elders, influential and tribal elders. About lack of textbooks, she went on as saying that the ministry was still in need of up to 90 million textbooks, while currently it wanted to distribute 50 million textbooks among the students. “No special changes have been brought in the books this year, but some mistakes occurred in the past textbooks have only been corrected. She said the ministry of education wanted to address lack of textbooks with the help of donors and the cost of publishing the textbooks would be paid by the USAID.
When asked about how many schools were without building, she added that up to 40 percent of schools had no building and the students were studying under open space. But 20,700 schools, the spokesman said were under the process of construction, in some extent with the help of local people, across the country. He called the role of people very constructive in education improvement and said up to 50 million Afghanis have been collected from the people through the local council members and other related entities all over the capital Kabul and people have also provided schools with cash aids in other provinces of the country. “We have 229,000 professional schoolteachers, with over 80,000 women, while there are nearly 50,000 unprofessional teachers, countrywide,” said the spokesman.
Shukria Kohistani
