It must be said that education is one of our priorities in Afghanistan. It's a priority of the Government of Canada. When we work in this sector, we must work at the national level in Kabul, for the entire country, and also at the provincial level in Kandahar. This work is being done at two levels.
Security is very important. It is closely linked to development. We must coordinate our development ambitions and progress accomplished on security. It is therefore important to conduct our operations in the sectors where there is an Afghan army presence, Afghan police officers or the Canadian armed forces. It's a matter of coordination. When we make progress in security, we can also make progress on development.
The school we visited is a school for men and women. It is located in the city of Kandahar. That city is better protected than other locations far from the capital. We have a number of ways to measure our progress. First, we can talk about the number of students, which continues to rise. We can also talk about the number of women at school, which also continues to rise. That's a very important measure. Perhaps it's easier in the north of the country and harder in Kandahar. One of our objectives is to increase the number of women who are studying.
We are also focusing our actions on administrative issues. How should we manage the education program in Afghanistan? Is the department functioning well? Is there a real administrative framework? Schools have to be built, but there also has to be a functional administration. We have a number of measures of progress.