Handicap International experience in Afghanistan - CBM

Table 6 highlights the advantage that large cities have over smaller cities and villages in terms of theexistence of schools and access to them. However, the differences in access to education for children aged7 to 14 who were disabled before school-going age in comparison to the others, shows an even wider gapbetween access in major urban regional centres (gap of 41.9%) than in the smaller towns and villages (gapof 25.9%). This confirms the trends that we have already described: educational efforts are not adequatelyreaching children with disability, and may even further increase the inequality of access if adequate measuresare not taken.Retention, Transition & CompletionAn analysis of education patterns within school provides an overview of the efficiency of the educationalsystem.Attendance rate is the rate of children of school-going age who are actually in school at the moment.Retention rates refer mainly to primary education. To calculate these the proportion of children whohave access to the first year of primary education and who are still in school during the last year of primaryeducation are considered.The attendancerate isparticularly highfor non-disabledboys between 7and 14 years old(76.8%), whichcorresponds tothe usual age forprimary schoolattendanceTransition rates are calculated at two different levels. Basic transition to and participation in secondaryeducation refer to the proportion of persons who completed primary school and have accessed secondaryeducation. Higher transition rates refer to the proportion of persons who complete secondary education andaccess higher education.Completion rates, as the term indicates, refer to the completion of a cycle of education, be it primary, secondaryor higher education. With household data and in the context of Afghanistan it is difficult to get verifiable dataregarding completion. For the NDSA access to higher levels of education was considered as completion forprimary education. Thus, any person who reached class 7 was considered to have finished primary education. Forsecondary education, calculating completion based on household data is even more complex as there is a verysmall proportion of persons who go on to higher education in Afghanistan. Therefore, the NDSA presents theproportion of individuals who reached class 12 as completing secondary education.Figure 24: Attendance Rates by Sex and Age Groups for Persons withDisability and Non-Disabled80706050403020100• Non-Disabled Girls• Non-Disabled BoysAged 7-13 Aged 7-17 Aged 7-18 Aged 7-19 Aged 14-188070605040302010• Girls with Disability• Boys with Disability0Aged 7-13 Aged 7-17 Aged 7-18 Aged 7-19 Aged 14-18Figure 24 shows that the attendance rate is particularly high for non-disabled boys between 7 and 14 yearsold (76.8%), which corresponds to the usual age for primary school attendance. This rate remains quite highafter 14 (more than half of the boys between 14 and 18) because boys who could not go to school duringthe war period started going to school after 2002, even if it was at a higher age. They started primary schoolbetween ages 8 and 15.36 Understanding the Challenge Ahead