Afghanistan Times
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Kabul: Afghanistan’s schools reopened Tuesday for the new academic year, but no classes were held as students were unaware of the start and hundreds of thousands of teenage girls remain barred from attending class.
Afghanistan is the only country in the world where girls are prohibited from going to secondary school.
The education ministry made no public announcement of the reopening of schools, several teachers and officials told AFP.
“A letter issued by the minister of education was given to us by our principal to reopen the school today, but since no public announcement was made, no students came,” said Mohammad Osman Atayi, a teacher at the Saidal Naseri Boys High School in Kabul to AFP.
AFP journalists toured seven schools in Kabul and saw only a few teachers and primary students arriving — but no classes were held.
Tuesday’s start of the new academic year coincided with Nowruz, the Persian New Year, celebrated widely in Afghanistan before the Taliban returned to power but now unacknowledged by the country’s new rulers.
Hundreds of thousands of teenage girls meanwhile remain barred from secondary school.
The ban on girls’ secondary education came into effect in March last year, just hours after the education ministry reopened schools for both girls and boys.
Taliban leaders –- who have also banned women from university education –- have repeatedly claimed they will reopen secondary schools for girls once “conditions” have been met, from obtaining funding to remodelling the syllabus along Islamic lines.
The international community has made the right to education for women a key condition in negotiations over aid and recognition of the Afghan interim government.
