Formulating flan for girls’ schooling: Ministry

KABUL (TOLOnews): A committee of the Ministry of Higher Education said it is working on a plan to reopen universities for girls and will share it with the public if finalized. Lutfullah Khairkhwa, the deputy minister of Higher Education, said during the annual reporting of the ministry that the finalization time for the plan is not clear. The Ministry of Higher Education in the past year has started 3 Ph.D. programs and 15 master’s programs, and now there are 9 Ph.D. programs and 40 master’s programs in Afghanistan, he said. Khairkhwa gave statistics that 118,000 new students were recruited to universities in the last year and more than 400,000 students are studying in the country’s universities. The deputy minister of Higher Education said that about 200 to 250 professors from various universities have left the country. Meanwhile, Hafiz Hamed Hasib, the financial and administrative deputy of the higher education ministry said in the annual report of the ministry that 658 religious scholars have been recruited to teach Islamic subjects in universities, and nearly 90 scholars have been invited to specialized Islamic programs. According to the Ministry of Education, in the past year more than 1 million new students were registered in schools, of which “more than 500,000 of them are girls,” presumably referring to girls under grade 7. Kiramatullah Akhoundzada, an official of the Education Ministry, in the annual report of the ministry, said that a total of 10,189,634 students, including more than 4 million girls, are registered with them. According to the ministry, there are 18,010 schools in Afghanistan now.