Afghanistan’s Ministry of Education has challenged a United Nations report on access to education, saying its findings do not reflect the full picture of the country’s education system.
The response follows a joint report released on 4 November by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which found that 53 per cent of primary-school-age children were outside formal education.
The report also said more than 2.6 million girls had been denied secondary education since 2021, when the Taliban returned to power.
In a statement issued on 10 November, the ministry said 18,090 public and private schools were operating across Afghanistan, with more than 7.6 million students enrolled.
It also reported more than 2.4 million students attending 20,372 religious schools, known as madrasas.
The ministry challenged how the UN findings were being interpreted.
“In the Ministry’s view, however, it is inappropriate to present a single statistical category as the complete picture of children’s education across the country.”
The ministry said nearly five million new students had enrolled during the past five years, while 373 new public schools had opened.
It also reported distributing more than 48.7 million textbooks and constructing buildings for 1,368 schools and madrasas.
The UN report identified poor education quality, teacher shortages and insufficient investment as major challenges.
The ministry acknowledged that barriers to education remained, but questioned the methodology behind the UN findings.
“The Ministry of Education is ready to cooperate with the relevant organisations on a technical comparison of its data, so that future assessments present an accurate and complete picture of education in Afghanistan.”
The ministry’s figures include religious education, while the UN’s 53 per cent estimate concerns formal general education. The two sets of figures therefore measure different categories.
The ministry did not announce any change to restrictions preventing girls from attending.
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