"Afghanistan Education Situation Report 2025" Misses the Point: This Is Not a Problem—It Is Educational Repression
The Afghanistan Education Situation Report 2025, jointly published by UNICEF and UNESCO, aims to provide an overview of education under Taliban rule, addressing access, quality, and system performance across primary, secondary, and higher education.
The primary concern regarding the Report is its methodology. The report heavily relies on data from the Education Management Information System (EMIS), the Ministry of Education’s administrative database, which has long faced significant issues related to data accuracy and reliability. Under the Taliban’s de facto rule, independent access to and verification of EMIS data is nearly impossible, increasing the risk of data manipulation and systematic distortion.
Furthermore, the report lacks a clear data verification or validation strategy to assure readers that these limitations have been addressed. There is no indication that triangulation with independent sources was utilized, nor does it provide specific warnings about which figures should be interpreted with caution. Consequently, assessing the credibility of the reported enrollment data remains challenging.
This methodological issue is particularly concerning given the Ministry of Education’s practice of keeping students on enrollment rosters for up to three years after they have left school. This practice artificially inflates enrollment figures and obscures the dropout rate, making it difficult to ascertain the actual number of students currently attending school. The distortion is most pronounced at the secondary level, where EMIS reports over two million secondary students, including girls, despite the well-documented fact that girls in Afghanistan are prohibited from attending school beyond Grade 6. Enrollment for girls in Grades 7–12 exists only on paper, recorded in Taliban-controlled databases rather than in active classrooms.
The report focuses solely on the problems at hand, without addressing the underlying causes or political factors that influence these issues. Although it includes the term “Situation” in the title, indicating a broader inquiry beyond the numerical data, it does not delve into the contextual meanings associated with the situation. One significant omission is the institutional aspect, specifically the changes in the national policy framework for education. For instance, the report fails to examine how the notorious and discriminatory Law on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice shapes and restricts education policy. It also overlooks how the policy-making process itself has changed. Decision-making that was once centralized in the MoE has now shifted, yet the report lacks an analysis of how this restructuring affects educational governance. These changes in authority and scope are essential, especially if the report aims to contribute to discussions on educational reform in Afghanistan. If the MoE is no longer the primary decision-making body for key education policies, fundamental questions arise: Who are the current decision-makers? How are policies now developed and enforced?
An important aspect missing from the report is the role of school-based management and social accountability in the schooling system, which is essential in the current suppressive environment. Community involvement remains one of the few mechanisms that can protect schools from abuse, political interference, and arbitrary changes imposed by the regime. This raises the question of the role of civil society, local councils, and school councils in education governance. The de facto authorities have long prohibited school councils and community shuras, effectively excluding communities from school affairs. This move aims to transform schools into traditional authoritarian madrasa-style institutions, devoid of public participation, transparency, and accountability to parents. This represents a significant structural issue that directly impacts school governance and educational outcomes. The report should have highlighted this gap and underscored the urgent need to restore and strengthen participatory school governance, drawing on successful experiences from the Republic era where community-based participation enhanced access, school safety, and accountability.
The recommendations section is a crucial yet absent component of the report. While it thoroughly discusses the issues, it does not address the vital question: what are the solutions?
Although proposing solutions might seem outside the scope of a technical document, given the current educational crisis in Afghanistan, a forward-looking section is as important as problem analysis. Without a clear roadmap, the report risks becoming just another descriptive document lacking actionable direction. UNICEF, UNESCO, and other UN agencies are expected to play a key role in shaping the educational aspect of the UN’s MOSAIC framework for Afghanistan, which remains one of the most significant international roadmaps for engagement in the country, despite its limitations. Therefore, the report should include a clear set of policy recommendations and a separate annex on education that outlines not only the problems but also their causes and practical solutions, providing a credible path forward for both national stakeholders and international partners.
Despite these limitations, one section of the report is particularly noteworthy for its clarity: it accurately identifies the Taliban’s education policies as a direct cause of systemic collapse. Unlike prior reports that attributed failures to conflict or economic crisis, this one recognizes the deliberate policy decisions driving educational decline. The Taliban have shifted the education system toward ideological indoctrination rather than genuine learning, significantly expanding madrasa-style religious instruction. They have implemented a unified curriculum for Grades 1–6 that allocates nearly half of teaching time to Islamic subjects, displacing essential subjects like mathematics, science, and social studies. Official communications to schools mandate reduced instruction in languages and social sciences in favor of religious education and selective STEM subjects aligned with the regime’s ideological agenda. This is not education reform; it is educational re-engineering.
The report reinforces that girls are disproportionately affected by Taliban policies, with 2.2 million adolescent girls excluded from education, and an additional 397,000 losing access each year.
The report uses the World Bank’s report, Afghanistan Learning Poverty Report, published last year, and reinforce that learning is not happening in Afghan schools – according to the report, 93 percent of children completing primary school in Afghanistan cannot read a simple text, ranking it among the worst-performing education systems globally.
The report notes that nearly half of schools lack basic water and sanitation, over 1,000 schools remain closed, and child labor and child marriage are on the rise due to educational exclusion. Over 90 percent of the Ministry of Education budget is allocated to salaries (Tashkīl), leaving minimal resources for textbooks, teacher training, classroom materials, school repairs, or winter heating. The education budget exists solely to sustain the system administratively, rather than to ensure academic functionality.
The report identifies several key challenges and reiterates ongoing concerns regarding access, exclusion, and declining quality. However, it primarily remains descriptive and does not address the deeper structural, institutional, and policy factors contributing to the crisis. By not confronting the political and policy roots of educational repression or offering a clear framework for solutions, it risks reinforcing the issue rather than fostering a meaningful discussion on how to protect and rebuild education in Afghanistan.