The British Council – Written evidence (AFG0017)
Follow-up briefing for International Relations Committee Inquiry on Afghanistan
17 September 2020
1.1 The work the British Council delivers in Afghanistan contributes to building peace and reconciliation, and addressing the trust deficit that hinders the country. We do this through building the educational resilience and opportunities of young people and by creating bridges between different groups in Afghanistan.
1.2 The reach of our work in Afghanistan is significant. Each year our work engages with millions of young Afghans throughout the country. In recent years our programmes have physically operated in more than half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, and our rising digital presence and programming provides a national reach. In general, the provinces which the British Council physically works in are under government control, whereas our digital programming helps us to engage in more remote areas and districts where we cannot physically operate, where online connectivity allows.
1.3 The impact of Covid-19 temporarily resulted in much of our physical work moving online. We will shortly resume our physical programming, which can continue to be complimented by innovative and cost-effective digital delivery models that reach even larger audiences more effectively.
1.4 The British Council’s work with schools delivers a positive impact for learners across the country. Over the last year our Connecting Classrooms programme engaged with more than three hundred schools, and through our schools and English projects we trained nearly 2,500 teachers face to face and online, helping to provide better quality learning opportunities for well over 100,000 school children. Nearly 60 schools from four provinces successfully achieved the International School Awards, the highest number since the inception of the programme. A network of 34 resource or learning centres, based in teacher training institutions or schools in 19 provinces, provided us with significant physical access. Teachers from the more difficult to reach provinces also trained through these hubs, before returning to their schools. Whilst funding constraints have reduced our current activity to around a third of the resource and learning centres in six provinces, the physical network we established provides great potential to reach most of the country directly or indirectly.
1.5 Similarly, our work in Higher Education partners with 16 universities in Kabul, Herat, Bamyan, Balkh, Kandahar, Nangarhar, Kunduz and Khost to build capacity and improve learning. The partner universities cascade learning to 80 other public and private universities, increasing the reach into surrounding provinces. An example of this is where Kandahar university cascades to universities in Helmand and Uruzgan. Our partnerships with these universities and the Ministry of Higher Education has gone further to develop policies and processes to review academic programmes taught in Afghan universities, to ensure graduates learn the skills needed to improve employment prospects – and this is now being applied to all public and private universities.
1.6 Our English language training for the Afghan National Defence and Security Force programme, where each year we improve the English language skills of over a thousand Afghan army officers and cadets, is delivered in Kabul. The officers and cadets themselves are from all over Afghanistan. A number of these trained officers have subsequently successfully undertaken training in the UK, including two female cadets, and supports improved inter-operability between the Afghan National Defence and Security Forces and international forces.
1.7 British Council also delivers around 5,000 high value internationally recognised UK qualifications in Kabul, through our administration of IELTS, ACCA and APTIS examinations. The planned introduction of computer delivered IELTS examinations in Afghanistan will provide the opportunity to deliver examinations further afield in the coming year.
1.8 Our work in arts is a programme of cultural leadership and skills development for the arts and creative industries, using culture as a means for peace building, as well as strengthening the cultural relationship and collaboration between Afghanistan and the UK. We have has previously worked in seven provinces, but currently focus on Kabul and Bamyan provinces. In Kabul, we are working with female authors, from a variety of ethnic backgrounds, through the Untold Write Afghanistan programme, and will target more women from other provinces in the next iteration of the programme. Our Crafting Futures programme is based in Bamiyan and works to build the skills and capacity of women at the forefront of efforts to preserve and expand crafts in Afghanistan. In general, our work with arts in Afghanistan aims to create safe spaces to tackle shared challenges, when other engagement might be too difficult.
1.9 Online, we engage millions of Afghan learners with UK content and programmes delivered through social media. British Council Afghanistan has over 1.8 million Facebook followers (around half of all Facebook users, and nearly a quarter of all people online in Afghanistan) accessing content and interacting with us online. Roughly two thirds of followers are from Kabul, with large numbers in Balkh, Kandahar, Herat, Nangarhar and Khost provinces, and significant engagement elsewhere. Online education opportunities, such as our English Doctor series, which attracts tens of thousands of active participants each month, are proving very popular, whilst users of our digital library, which provides access to world class UK content, is also growing towards 3,500 members. With investment, our digital presence can continue to grow and has the potential to operate at a massive scale to reinforce the role soft power can play in the peace building agenda.
2.1 The inclusion of women and girls underpins all British Council activities in Afghanistan: females generally account for over half of our overall programme participation.
2.2 For example, in our work in schools the gender split of participants in teacher development courses and programmes delivered through our English resources centres is typically around 50:50. Our Connecting Classrooms online courses tend to reach more young female teachers than male teachers.
2.3 Our Higher Education programming typically works with senior leaders and policy makers, to build the capacity of institutions. Whilst we routinely target improved gender representation, the gender reach generally mirrors the lower numbers of women employed in senior positions throughout the sector. That said, we ensure that the indirect beneficiaries of the programme are both male and female students.
2.4 Our Active Citizens programme works with a number of Higher Education institutions in Kabul, Herat and Nangarhar. Here, women make up around 20% of facilitators, but, encouragingly, more than half of the university students involved in the programme are women. Around one in seven of our Premier Skills programme Coach Educators are women, whereas over half of the trained Community Coaches are women and girls.
2.5 Around 5-7% participants of our English programme training officers and cadets from the Afghan security forces are female (generally reflecting the low numbers of females in the Afghan National Defence and Security Force). Each year, even in such a male dominated institution, we train over 120 female cadets at the Afghan National Army Officers Academy and the National Military Academy of Afghanistan.
2.6 Our Arts programming mainly focuses on participants who are women and girls. The Untold Write Afghanistan is a writer development programme for 20 women writers from marginalised communities who are currently unable to tell their stories beyond their immediate surroundings. The writers will have the opportunity to develop their writing; share their stories with wider communities in their own languages; and reach new global audiences following translation. The Crafting Futures programme supports women artisans and craft entrepreneurs to become a driving and transformational force in the crafts sector of Afghanistan, and this year we are training 100 women artisans with our partners Applied Arts Scotland and UNESCO.
2.7 Our online Facebook participation data suggests around 15% of people that engage through our Facebook channel are women and girls (the vast majority under 35 years of age). In general, the gender split reflects the internet penetration data in Afghanistan, although it is thought that some females create male profiles online.#
2.8 The Covid-19 crisis impacted much of our work in Afghanistan, particularly following the long closure of educational institutions. During the disruption, online working proved an effective way to continue to reach some audiences, and the British Council has learned much form the experience that will help inform how we will work in the future. Aside from the large numbers engaged through our digital products, our Connecting Classrooms programme reached 70 schools and 80 teachers digitally, and we successfully delivered online workshops for our Active Citizens and Higher Education programmes with university staff at home or in their universities. Our English training programme with the Afghan Army continued online throughout the summer (with participants socially-distanced in training rooms receiving tuition from a tutor online).
2.9 Whilst at this stage there is no evidence to suggest the Covid-19 crisis has affected the gender split of our work, general concerns about the significant impact that the crisis has had on women and girls in Afghanistan are emerging. A UN Women, UNCEF and UNFPA gender alert, released in July, highlighted the potentially severe risks that school closures could have on increasing drop-out rates, and the disproportionate impact on girls living in poverty where families lose their means of livelihood. A Save the Children report issued in mid-September further highlighted that 8 in 10 Afghan school children surveyed say they learned little or nothing whilst schools were closed during the lockdown. In general, a number of schools and universities attempted to deliver learning online during the Covid-19 shutdown, with limited success (although evidence is quite limited at this stage).
3.1 The British Council’s online audiences have grown significantly in Afghanistan during the last few years, and with this our geographical reach has certainly expanded into those living in challenging regions. Overall internet penetration in Afghanistan remains at less than 20% of the population and is predominantly male – and annual growth rates are significantly lower than, for example, Pakistan. For the British Council, whilst our digital interactions are a critical and growing element of our work that greatly complements our overall programming in Afghanistan, we continue to be mindful of both the potential online, and the practical limitations.
3.2 The ability to engage hard to reach communities can often reflect the challenges and barriers that prevent people from going online: cost of equipment, connectivity charges, inadequate infrastructure (particularly electricity supply) and a lack of technical knowledge are widespread for many in Afghanistan. Beyond the infrastructure, gender is another important consideration, where women and girls may be less able to readily access technology.
3.3 Alongside our online work, a common model for our programme delivery is to bring participants to a suitable location which includes access to appropriate technology, and a safe space for engagement and learning. This year we will pilot our English and Digital for Girls Education programme, to improve English, digital literacy, and social skills, which has recently worked well in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. The feasibility study surveyed the attitudes and motivations of 250 Afghan girls between the ages of 13 and 19, a third of which were not currently attending school, and from a variety of marginalised backgrounds. The study highlighted the importance of local, safe spaces for learning. The pilot will launch later this year, using existing community-based infrastructure in Bamyan province.
3.4 In South Asia more generally, we are exploring the use of traditional broadcast media channels (radio and television) to support further engagement into harder to reach communities.
Received 18 September 2020
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