Afghan children face narrowing path to education, UN agencies report — UN News

More than half of Afghanistan’s children who should be in primary school remain outside formal learning and millions of girls can only dream of going to university. That’s according to the latest Afghanistan Education Situation report published by the UN’s educational and cultural organization UNESCO and child rights agency UNICEF. “Afghanistan’s education situation in 2026 is defined by a widening mismatch between strong demand for learning and the capacity of the education system to meet it,” they said. The school-age population – people aged seven to 18 – grew from approximately 10.4 million in 2019 to 11.5 million in 2024, putting increased pressure on already overstretched schools, teachers and education services. Recurring emergencies, insufficient investment and large-scale returns of Afghans from Pakistan and Iran are adding to the strain. More than a million returnees arrived this year alone, including more than 245,000 children. The report notes that education access is deeply unequal as more than 2.6 million girls have been barred from attending school beyond the sixth grade following the return of the Taliban in August 2021. The few remaining opportunities for learning for teenage girls – such as community-based education, literacy and skills development programmes, distance and digital learning as well as private tutoring – “are far from sufficient”, it stresses. Although some 5,300 community-driven classes serve around 162,000…