Two years after the daughter of a coal miner scored the top mark in the country, not one girl was in the top 10 of the 2022 university entrance exam results. As well, Kandahar had the highest percentage of success in the examination results, which surprised some given its lower rankings in previous years.
The top position this year went to Sulaiman Rabin, a graduate from Sultan Ghiyasuddin Ghori High School from Herat province, who scored 355.4 on his entrance exam. Meanwhile, Mohammad Shabir from Kabul placed second with 355.3, while Hedayat from Herat earned 354 for the third spot.
The announcement of this year’s results comes after the shocking terrorist attacks on Kaaj Education Centre in Kabul on September 30, which primarily targeted female Hazaras working on a mock entrance exam. Fatima Amiri lost an eye in the attack. She scored 313 on the university entrance exam and will enter Kabul University’s computer science department.
“Psychological pressures, direct and indirect targeted attacks on female students such as the attack on the Kaaj educational centre, and prospects of a dark future, are the main reasons for the absence of girls in the top ranks of the university entrance exam,” says a principal of a private high school in Badghis.
He also tells Zan Times that “there are girls’ names in the 10th to 20th [section of the] list. He believes that those achievements show that their struggles have been successful, despite the many obstacles in their way.
Women’s rights organizations in Afghanistan have called the current situation of women and girls in Afghanistan worse than the previous period of Taliban rule.
After regaining power, the Taliban closed girls’ schools above grade six. When the latest group of high school graduates in 33 provinces took their entrance exams containing fields determined by the Taliban’s Ministry of Higher Education, they discovered that many programs were removed from the girls’ selection form.
