Ghulam Omar Qargha

Ghulam Omar Qargha is a fellow in the Center for Universal Education at Brookings and an education, research, and program evaluation expert with 20 years of overseas experience designing, managing, implementing, and evaluating international education programs. Qargha’s expertise is in policy analysis, program design, education transfer, and research on teacher education, curriculum development, educational delivery, and monitoring and evaluation in the developing world, with a particular focus on fragile, conflict-affected, and emergency contexts. As a fellow in the Center for Universal Education at Brookings, Qargha leads the SPARKS project, which focuses on how mindsets, values, experiences, systems, structures, and other intangible factors influence pedagogy in local contexts through collaborative research.

Qargha’s work experience includes developing national standards for teacher education programs; developing science- and math-training programs; developing national teacher competency and credentialing systems; working with grassroots organizations to manage school construction; developing teacher training, peace, and environmental training curricula; and conducting research, monitoring, and evaluation of education and development efforts.

In his last position, Qargha served as the chief technical advisor for Afghanistan’s minister of education. He led the national reform of Afghanistan’s educational system, led the development of the Afghanistan National Education Policy (1400), and provided technical advice and direction for the structural reform of the Ministry of Education based on the new policy.

Before his international development work, Qargha taught chemistry in Jacksonville, Florida.

Qargha holds a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry from the University of North Florida, a Master of Education degree in curriculum and instruction from George Mason University, a Master of Arts degree in international comparative education from Stanford University, and a doctoral degree in international education policy from the University of Maryland, College Park.