On December 18, the Afghan Minister of Education Assadullah Hanif Balkhi said a  recent study found that only six million Afghan children are at school – contrary to the 11 million as previously stated during Hamid Karzai’s government.
 
But on Monday, deputy minister of education Sayed Hamidullah Amini said in parliament that the number of students currently enrolled at school is around 9.2 million, contradicting the figures given by Balkhi.
 
“There are around 9.2 million, it is important to mention that these figures are for government schools and private schools, if we included students studying in our schools outside the country, the figture is estimated to be 9.7 million,” he said.
 
According to Balkhi, currently up to six million children are attending 17,000 schools across the country. A total of nine million children are registered but 24 percent of them do not attend school.
 
“Our statistics are authentic. Eleven million were not enrolled – not even on the database of the previous government. The media was given the wrong statistics,” Balkhi told TOLOnews during an interview earlier this month.
 
On Monday, officials from the Ministry of Education (MoE), Ministry of Woman Affairs (MoWA), Ministry of Information and Culture (MoIC), Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) and Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation, Ministry of Hajj and Religious Affairs (MoHRA)  and Urban Development were summoned to the Wolesi Jirga (Lower House of Parliament) to report on their performance.
 
The cabinet ministers defended their performance in the Wolesi Jirga at a time when the majority of Afghans in the country are voicing concerns over the existence of endemic corruption and negligence by government departments.