Program Report ansf literacy Program: The Afghan National Security Forces in the Central & Eastern Provinces of Afghanistan, August 2010-December 2014 United Alliance Global Solutions
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| A. Afghan National Army
While the ANSF Literacy Program was one US Government funded IDIQ contract, UAGS conducted literacy training for the ANA and ANP separately. The Ministry of Defense Religious and Cultural Affairs (RCA) department guided soldier participation in ANA literacy program. During the first two years of the program, UAGS had literacy instructors and staff at any location (regardless of the conditions) that soldiers could complete the training. This often meant assigning literacy instructors to the unit (kandak) level who moved with those units throughout their field assignments. UAGS took great care in selecting literacy teachers that could relate to the duties and responsibilities of the ANA soldiers, operate under extreme conditions, and provide results. The ANA was very supportive of literacy training and immediately saw the need and benefits of having a literate force. It could be assumed that soldiers in garrison may have more time and availability to attend literacy training than those in field-based units. UAGS’s analysis of both academic and attendance data shows the contrary. Soldiers in field-based units attended literacy classes more consistently and dedicated more training time to literacy than Kabul-based garrison units. Using a performance-based approach to training yielded significant academic results within the ANA. When soldiers were permitted and encouraged to progress through the program according to their abilities without mandatory attendance requirements, they flourished. When held to attendance mandates, that would have been difficult to meet under the best of conditions, fewer soldiers had the ability to enroll in training. In many cases, due to their wartime missions, ANA unit commanders were not able to commit a fixed amount of time each day to literacy training. In our experience, unless the ANA conducts literacy training at a pre-deployment center, such as KMTC, educational programs must be oriented on outcomes not attendance. The academic results compiled by UAGS, and current educational research in general, supports this view. The figure below (Figure 6) describes the number of graduations achieved by ANA soldiers in our area of operations, the central and eastern provinces, from the start of the program to its end in December 2014. Figure 4. ANA Graduation Data Download 221.99 Kb. Share with your friends:
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