WORLD BANK AID FOR NEPAL EDUCATION

WORLD BANK AID FOR NEPAL EDUCATION

The World Bank has pledged a further financial assistance of USD130 million towards meeting Nepal’s Education for All goals. The School Sector Reform Programme approved on Sept. 22 is the main vehicle for the implementation of the Nepal government’s 15-year National Programme of Action.

The World Bank said that the funding will meet a slice of the programme’s expenditures over the next five years – both recurrent and development - covering all levels of school education. The programme focuses on the three pillars of Access, Inclusion and Quality. It is supported by eight other development partners who will also pool their resources, together with the World Bank , and with Government resources, reads the press statement issued by the WB in Washinton DC on Sept. 22. In addition, five “non-pooling partners” will support the programme directly. The total cost of the five-year programme (2009/10-2013/14) is estimated to be about USD2.6 billion, of which pooled development partners have committed approximately USD500 million.

As a sector wide approach, the programme will finance salaries and benefits for nearly 120,000 government school teachers. It will also finance salaries of around 100,000 community recruited teachers through salary grants. The programme plans to address the problem of uneven deployment of teachers by providing incentives for teachers to transfer from schools that have too many teachers to those with too few

The programme will also finance a range of activities intended to ensure equitable access and quality basic education for all children in the 5-12 age group, prepare pre- school age children for basic education through Early Childhood Education Development and deliver basic numeracy and literacy to youth and adults, especially women.

“Nepal should be proud of its accomplishments in the education sector,” said Susan Goldmark, World Bank Country Director for Nepal. “In 1951 there were only 10,000 children in primary and secondary schools. Now there are more than 7 million students in more than 30,000 schools throughout the country. Still, much more remains to be done so that schools provide each child with the skills needed to find good jobs and succeed. That is what this partnership with the Ministry of Education and development partners strives to accomplish.”

Because earlier programmes were so successful, the demand for quality schooling beyond primary level has soared. To meet this demand and to provide children with skills to prepare them for a life of work, Nepal is now combining the primary and lower secondary cycles to form a basic education cycle of grades 1-8 and a secondary cycle of grades 9-12

The World Bank has been a partner to the development of Nepal’s education sector for over 30 years through a series of national programmes. These include the Basic and Primary Education Projects I and II, the Community School Support Programme, the Higher Education Projects I and II and the Education for All Programme.

The project is a blend of credit (USD71.50 million) and grant (USD58.50 million) from the International Development Association, the World Bank’s concessionary lending arm. The credit has 40 years to maturity with a 10-year grace period.