Since 2002, Afghanistan has made significant gains in education, from enrolling millions of girls in primary school to training teachers in updated curricula that included reading, math and science.
Yet the education sector in Afghanistan continues to face significant challenges. An estimated 53 percent of Afghan youth ages 15 to 24 are illiterate.
The Ministry of Education requires capacity building support to improve the quality of learning and literacy instruction for Afghan children.
The five-year Afghan Children Read program worked with the Ministry of Education to build and implement a sustainable, scalable and evidence-based national early grade reading program while strengthening the capacity of the ministry at all levels to scale up and sustain the model.
The program was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development and implemented by Creative Associates International.
The program’s learning laboratory piloted innovative and cost-effective approaches to create a model for a safe, inclusive and equitable learning environment that will support all children in Grades 1 to 3 in learning to read and write. This lab served as a platform to understand what approaches and strategies are showing successes and where challenges are confronted. By doing so, it helped to inform and shape the early grade reading model to better fit the context and contours of Afghanistan.
Creative implemented the project with its partners, The International Rescue Committee, Equal Access and SIL LEAD.