World Bank approves $400m to support education programmes in Sindh

ISLAMABAD: Even as prospects for a new loan remains under a cloud, the World Bank (WB) on Friday approved a package of assistance worth $400 million to support the second Sindh Education Sector Reform Program (SERP II).     

The program will support Sindh government's efforts to increase school participation and measure student achievement by improving sector governance and accountability and strengthening administrative systems.

"Improving school participation is a priority in Sindh as the government has underlined this further by passing Sindh Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act," said Rachid Benmessaoud, Country Director for the World Bank Pakistan.

Renmessaoud said, "The World Bank is committed to take the next evolutionary step and zero in on improving service delivery performance at the school level and thereby, increase child school participation through this program."

School participation in Sindh has shown a very slow improvement over the past few years and with huge disparities across districts, especially for girls in rural areas, said WB press statement issued on Friday.

An important factor behind the low education outcomes in the province is poor management and minimal monitoring and accountability of the government school system.

The situation has been compounded by three years of continuous flood damage to school infrastructure and disruption in service delivery in many districts across Sindh.

Realising these facts, the Sindh government focused on the second generation of reforms by introducing key governance and accountability measures to improve education outcomes in Sindh.

These reforms include a continuous emphasis on merit and need-based teacher recruitment, professionalising the education management cadre, public private partnerships in remote rural areas, and measuring and reporting on student achievements in the primary and middle grades.

"We anticipate that SERP-II will contribute to substantial improvements in education sector service delivery and management over the next three years, by directly focusing improvement efforts on students, teachers and education managers" said Umbreen Arif, task team leader of the project.

"We look forward to lending our technical and financial cooperation to the government of Sindh in its promising and ambitious endeavor to reach national and global education targets of Education for All," Umbreen added.

The SERP-II will provide financial, technical, and advisory support through a results-based specific investment credit with the majority of disbursements contingent on the satisfactory achievement of pre-specified program implementation progress and performance targets in 10 initiatives that aim to address gaps and/or current poor practices in education sector management and governance.

The credit is financed from the International Development Association (IDA), and will be on standard IDA blend terms, with a maturity of 25 years, including a grace period of five years.