Taliban's Education Minister Abdul Hakim Hemat has confirmed a ban on secondary school education for senior girls. According to a BBC report, the minister said that girls in Afghanistan who want to attend secondary school will have to wait until a new education policy is enacted at the start of 2022. Some girls' schools are reported to have reopened after negotiating with local Taliban officials, the report stated.

The statement marks the first acknowledgment by Taliban authorities of such a ban. Teachers and teenage girls from 13 provinces, out of Afghanistan's total 34, told the BBC that they are still barred from classrooms.

The Taliban seems to be divided about education and work for senior girls, and young women, with the hardliners saying education for women was against their version of Islam while more progressive among them wanting to liberalise the education policy, and allow older girls to study and young women to work in all areas. 

 Last month said it would allow women to to attend university, but require them to do so in gender-segregated classrooms while abiding by the Islamic dress code.

"We have nothing to do apart from housework… we are just frozen in one place," Laila, 16, who's never been to school after the Taliban takeover, was quoted as saying in the report. Raising the issue of acute poverty, one headteacher from central Ghor province said that, "I think many of our students are going to die… They don't have enough food to eat and they cannot keep themselves warm. You cannot imagine the poverty."

Teachers said that the situation was affecting girls' wellbeing and students are really upset, they're suffering mentally.

A Kabul-based teacher told the broadcaster: "I try to give them hope but it's hard because they are exposed to so much sadness and disappointment."

Several weeks after Taliban took over Kabul, the hardline Islamist group on September 17 announced that schooling for boys would resume. The announcement did not make any mention of girls, UNI news agency said.(SAM)