The Taliban administration dismissed the principal of the Special Education High School in Balkh province following widespread protests by students; however, visually impaired and deaf students say this action alone does not address the deep educational challenges faced by the institution. Located in Mazar-i-Sharif city, the school educates around 300 visually impaired and deaf students.<\/p>\n
Students claim that several individuals they believe are responsible for the educational stagnation remain in the administrative and teaching staff. On Thursday, May 7, they emphasized that changing the principal without fundamentally reviewing the composition of teachers cannot improve the quality of education.<\/p>\n
According to the students, many current teachers lack basic skills to educate students with special needs. They stated that teachers unfamiliar with Braille for the blind and sign language for the deaf are unable to effectively convey curriculum concepts, a problem directly impacting their academic future.<\/p>\n
Previously, the students had sent a letter to the media complaining about the shortage of specialized teachers and weak management at the high school. They said that four days after the academic year began on April 18, their classes remained without teachers.<\/p>\n
School officials attributed this delay to contract procedures for transportation vehicles to transfer the students. However, the students maintain that the issue is not limited to transportation and that a lack of planning and effective supervision has disrupted the educational process.<\/p>\n
They also noted that before ceasing operations in Balkh, the Norwegian Refugee Council for Afghanistan had provided the school with dozens of pieces of equipment and educational materials specially designed for the blind and deaf. Due to teachers’ unfamiliarity with how to use these resources, the equipment has essentially gone unused.<\/p>\n
The students have now requested that the central Directorate of Technical and Vocational Education in Kabul send a delegation to Mazar-i-Sharif to assess the situation, identify educational gaps, and replace teachers working outside their fields with specialized instructors. This demand underscores that superficial changes without structural reform will not meet the needs of this vulnerable group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Students in Balkh protest over lack of specialized teachers at a special education high school, urging structural reforms beyond leadership changes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-social-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}