Education in Afghanistan

Education in Afghanistan includes K–12 and higher education, which is supervised by the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Higher Education in Kabul, Afghanistan. Afghanistan is going through a nationwide rebuilding process and, despite setbacks, institutions are established across the country. By 2013 there were 10.5 million students attending schools in Afghanistan, a country with a population of around 27.5 million people.

One of the oldest schools in Afghanistan is the Habibia High School in Kabul, which was built by King Habibullah Khan in 1903 to educate students from the nation's elite class. In the 1920s, the German-funded Amani High School opened in Kabul, and about a decade later two French lycées (secondary schools) began, the AEFE and the Lycée Esteqlal. The Kabul University was established in 1932.

Education was improved under the rule of King Zahir Shah between 1933 and 1973, making primary schools available to about half the population who were younger than 12 years of age and expanding the secondary school system and Kabul University.

During the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan, the government of the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) reformed the education system; education was stressed for both sexes, and widespread literacy programmes were set up. By 1978, women made up 40 percent of the doctors and 60 percent of the teachers at Kabul University; 440,000 female students were enrolled in educational institutions and 80,000 more in literacy programs. Despite improvements, large percentage of the population remained illiterate. Beginning with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, successive wars virtually destroyed the nation's education system. Most teachers fled during the wars to neighboring countries. In the middle of the 1990s, about 650 schools were destroyed or used as bunkers. In 1996 the Taliban regime restricted education for females, and the madrassa (mosque school) became the main source of primary and secondary education. About 1.2 million students were enrolled in schools during the Taliban, with fewer than 50,000 of them girls.

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