Education Needs of Internally Displaced Children in Afghanistan: A Needs Assessment Survey

Abstract

There is consensus that 40 years of war created an illiteracy gap in the education of children and parents in Afghanistan. Education was not considered to be amongst the primary need of the population particularly amongst those who have been displaced from their home due to security reasons and living in extremely harsh conditions in and around major cities of Afghanistan. It is obvious that this gap will have a subsequent negative effect on the future Afghan generations. There are also concerns that the parents of the children in these internally displaced refugees may be opposed to the education of their children and may not be open to receiving knowledge through technological advances. Therefore, the objective of this study was to survey Afghan parents and children in internally displaced camps with the following specific aims: to assess the needs for schooling in these camps; the willingness of parents to allow their children to go to school; the willingness of children to attend the schools; the level of support for education of children from the Government of Afghanistan Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and to determine how familiar internally displaced Afghan children are with digital technology and how open they are to accept delivery of knowledge by electronic advances. A questionnaire was designed and distributed amongst 160 parents and 160 children in 10 internally displaced comps in and around the city of Kabul in Afghanistan. Results of the survey show that the Government of Afghanistan does not provide education for these children directly, however, they are very supportive of NGOs to provide this type of support. The survey also shows that the number of NGOs activities in this field is very limited and inconsistent. Results also demonstrated that 99% of the parents and children in these internally displaced camps are pro-education and they pledged their unconditional support to any schooling initiative that would take place in these camps. The majority of children are not familiar with digital technology but are very curious to receive education through digital technology. It is concluded that internally displaced children in Afghanistan are ready and looking forward to going to school and there is an urgent and immediate need to support these children in order to fill in the education gap and prevent the social consequences related to this gap.