Afghanistan Baccalaureate

Overview

The Afghanistan Baccalaureate, usually called the 12th Grade Graduation Certificate, is the school-leaving qualification awarded at the end of upper secondary education (grades 10 to 12). It is a separate qualification from Kankor, the national university entrance exam: the Baccalaureate certifies that a student has finished school, while Kankor is the competitive exam students sit afterwards to win a seat at a public university. Afghanistan's school system has been run by the Taliban's de facto authorities since 2021, and official details of how the Baccalaureate is currently administered are hard to confirm independently, so this page focuses on what is verifiable and flags where the picture is unclear.

Who can apply

Students complete grade 12 after nine years of lower schooling plus three years of upper secondary education, choosing between a general subject cluster (which leads on to higher education) and a vocational cluster at the start of grade 10. Only students who finish the general cluster and pass their final-year school assessments are awarded the certificate needed to sit Kankor.

Since the Taliban barred girls from attending school beyond grade 6 in March 2022, girls and women have not been able to continue into grades 10 to 12 in most of the country, so in practice this exam and certificate are currently only reached by male students. UNESCO has reported millions of Afghan girls excluded from secondary education as a result. Readers should treat this as the current, significant limitation on who can take this exam, not a historical footnote.

Exam pattern

Grade 12 students in the general cluster study a mix of religious studies, local languages (Dari/Pashto), mathematics, natural sciences, social studies, a foreign language, and physical education, building on the subject choices made when they entered grade 10. Final assessment is set and marked at the school/provincial level under Ministry of Education oversight, rather than through one single centralised national paper. We could not independently confirm the exact subject list, paper format, or number of papers used in current cycles, so this section describes the general structure reported for the upper-secondary curriculum rather than a fixed exam timetable.

Marking and results

Afghan schools record marks on a numeric scale, and a passing mark in each subject is required before the 12th Grade Graduation Certificate is issued. We were not able to confirm the exact current pass-mark thresholds from an official source, so they are left out here rather than guessed.

After the exam

Passing the Baccalaureate is the entry requirement for Kankor, the separate national entrance exam run by the Ministry of Higher Education for places at public universities; private universities and institutes may set their own additional admission routes. Kankor itself has continued to run in recent cycles, but multiple independent reports describe it as currently open to male candidates only, consistent with the wider ban on women's secondary and higher education. Students and counsellors should confirm current eligibility and the exact process directly with Afghan authorities or a recognised credential-evaluation body, since this page cannot verify day-to-day operational detail with confidence.

Preparation tips

• Confirm which subject cluster (general or vocational) your school has you on, since only the general cluster leads to Kankor eligibility.

• Keep final-year coursework and internal assessments in every subject on track, since the certificate depends on passing each one, not a single external paper.

• Treat Kankor as a distinct, later step: preparation for it (subject-wide multiple-choice practice) is different from preparing for individual school-leaving assessments.

• Given how often rules have changed since 2021, check current eligibility and procedure close to the time rather than relying on older guidance.

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