Afghanistan: training the new generation of planners

28 October 2011
Visit of Afghan Minister of Education to IIEP

On the occasion of the UNESCO General Conference, their Excellencies, Mr Farooq Wardak, Minister of Education of Afghanistan, and Mr Mohammad Kacem Fazelly, Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of Afghanistan to UNESCO, paid a visit to IIEP on Friday 28 October 2011. This visit was an opportunity to stress the progress made by Afghanistan in the education sector over the recent years and to thank IIEP for its key contribution in the development of the Ministry of Education’s human resources.

Since early 2002, with assistance from IIEP, the Afghan Ministry of Education (MoE) has been working on developing the technical skills of its planners. The MoE has come a long way since, despite the still very challenging conditions in the country.

If Afghanistan were to cater for the capacity development needs of all education personnel involved directly or indirectly in planning tasks at the central, provincial and district levels, it would need to train more than 2,000 people. Only a national training institution can meet this objective in Afghanistan. Investing now in the next generation of education planners and managers is essential. The MoE and IIEP are finding solutions together to address training needs.

Developing sustainable training and planning capacity

The current MoE/IIEP cooperation project is financed by Denmark. It has two priority objectives:

  1. train provincial and district education officers in the provinces; and
  2. develop a national sustainable MoE-based training programme for its staff at all levels, implemented by national trainers.

Since May 2011, nearly 650 provincial and district officers have received a first round of training in yearly operational planning and monitoring in 13 (of the 35) provinces of Afghanistan.

To scale up this training initiative, the MoE is developing a training programme with the support of IIEP that will attempt to provide up to 400 education officers from all provinces with a solid foundation in specific planning domains. This programme will focus on their daily duties so as to ensure its relevance, but also to make sure that capacity development leads to enhanced planning, performance and management of the education sector.

Other training opportunities such as scholarships on the IIEP Advanced Training Programme (ATP) will of course continue but on a smaller scale. This year, three MoE officers are being trained in the 47th session of the ATP.

 

Meeting with the Jalal Foundation

On 25 October, IIEP received a delegation from the Jalal Foundation. This Afghan organization seeks to promote, empower, educate and inform Afghan women by building their capacity in human rights, gender issues and leadership. The discussions were focused on IIEP’s activities in Afghanistan as well as the gender equality strategy of the Institute (especially concerning the promotion of women in leadership positions in the education sector). This first meeting was fruitful and laid the groundwork for possible future cooperation.