UNICEF Education AFG 2022-2024

Support to UNICEF Afghanistan for in-service capacity development of teachers. UNICEF Afghanistan has requested Sida to support the project "improve children's learning outcomes through better prepared and supported teachers." The project, which spans 24 months, focuses on in-service training of public school teachers, with a special focus on female teachers. The project also includes a smaller component aimed at providing the opportunity for 730 student female teachers to receive their teaching certificate from a Teacher Training College (TTC). The total amount requested for the two year project is 140 000 000 SEK (approximately 14,389,968 USD). Pre-August 2021, Sida contributed to teacher training through its support to the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) managed by the World Bank. However, all programmes under ARTF - including the education programme Education Quality Reform in Afghanistan (EQRA) - have been suspended. These funds will now be channeled into the World Bank's new project Education Emergency Response in Afghanistan (EERA), which will be implemented by UNICEF. Since this is an emergency response, it will focus on sustaining access to education. It will not include any components focused on quality education. The EERA project will focus on 1 ) paying stipends to 193 000 teachers and school based staff, 2) supporting some Community Based Education (CBE), 3) gender based rehabilitation of school infrastructure, and 4) project and sector monitoring. To complement EERA, and other funding streams, Sida requested a proposal from UNICEF focused on quality education. The proposed UNICEF project aims to 1) develop and test a teacher education and training programme, with specific focus on quality, equity and need, to strengthen the teaching and learning process and improve learning outcomes, and to 2) increase the availability of qualified female teachers. For the first outcome, the target would be 15,000 teachers (9,000 female), with a focus on newely recruited teachers in primary schools for girls. For the second outcome, the target will be 730 female student teachers (i.e. females with grade 12 education who teach at the primary level but lacks the two years of teacher training necessary to receive a certificate). Activities under the first outcome are to be implemented in five provinces representative of the five different regions of Afghanistan (North, Central, East, West, and South). This will allow UNICEF to include lessons-learned from the different regions and develop a plan for a nation-wide roll-out by the end of the project. Activities under the second outcome will focus on three different regions, based on where girls participation and the number of female teachers are limited. The focus will be on rural areas. The target group will include 154 female teachers who have started the programme but not been able to finalise due to lack of funding, as well as 576 new recruits to the two year programme. It is paramount that quality education continuous to be prioritised in public schools in Afghanistan, and that the mistakes made in the last two decades are not repeated. If children are not learning in schools, the demand for education from the communities will decrease. Hence, Sida's added-value in the sector today is its ability to go beyond the emergency support promoted by most other donors, and focus on qualitative and sustainable education. This has become even more important after the pro-longed school closure due to both Covid 19 and the complex context. This is also one of the reasons why Sida has favoured a project support to UNICEF focused on quality education, rather than broader thematic support.