Class 6 girls and boys in Afghanistan 2013: comparing outcomes of girls and boys from a learning assessment of mathematical, reading and writing literacy

In 2012, the Ministry of Education, Afghanistan, engaged the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) as a partner to support the development of a national learning assessment program in Afghanistan. To achieve this goal, the Learning Assessment unit of the Ministry of Education and ACER have collaborated to design and implement the Monitoring Trends in Educational Growth (MTEG) program in Afghanistan. MTEG is designed as a long-term monitoring program with one focus on trends in achievement outcomes in single class levels over time, and another focus on the growth of achievement in cohorts throughout the school cycle, from Class 3 through to Class 9. In 2013, 110 schools and 5979 students participated in the assessment for Class 6, representing 361,172 students estimated to be in the Class 6 population across the 13 provinces. This report looks at the differences in performance by gender.