$500 million World Bank fund for universal secondary education

After chipping in with the flagship elementary education scheme Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the World Bank is now helping the government with a $ 500 million loan to support its scheme for universalising secondary education, the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA). The scheme which is targeted at taking children from elementary school level to secondary level (classes IX and X), started off in 2010 and is estimated to benefit approximately 35 million students annually by 2015.

RMSA will be aided by the World Bank for a five year period from 2012 to 2017. The RMSA was conceptualised with the aim of meeting the increased demand for secondary education as larger numbers started moving up from class VIII (elementary education) due to the impetus given by SSA. In the past, the World Bank has chipped in with $ 1.5 billion, and prior to that $ 1.1 billion loans to support the elementary education scheme SSA. The new loan of $ 500 million for RMSA will be disbursed over a five year period; $ 50 million in 2012-13, followed by $ 125 million in next three years culminating in $ 75 million in 2016-17.

This secondary education scheme aims to provide a secondary school within 5 km of every habitation. Just as in the elementary education scheme, this scheme too intends to not just enable access (proximity) for children especially for girls and those from the poor and marginalised sections to schools but is also intended and to improve the quality and management of secondary education throughout the country. A crucial step to retaining more girls in school is building separate toilets for girls and boys.

Toby Linden, Lead Education Specialist, World Bank speaking to Business Standard said, “The World Bank supports the whole RMSA programme. One new element that will come in, is innovation fund for schools, districts, NGOs and others to generate new ideas to improve quality, equity and access. Learning from these ideas, new approaches will enhance the whole RMSA Programme.”

This centrally-sponsored scheme, covering government and government aided schools is implemented in collaboration with the state governments. While the funding pattern between the Centre and the states in the XI th Five year plan was in the ratio of 75:25, this will be reviewed for the XIIth Five Year Plan. For the North Eastern States however 90:10 sharing ratio will apply for the XI and XII th Five Year Plans.

Liden says, that the allocation of funds is demand-driven, based on the needs and approved requests from states. Therefore, utilisation of the allocation will be dependent on the requirements of a particular state. Funds will be used under several heads including for setting up new secondary schools, upgrade existing upper primary schools and repair and renovate existing secondary schools.

Learning from the lacunae in implementing the elementary education scheme SSA, right from the beginning emphasis in the RMSA will also be on providing quality education. This will be through filling up vacancies for teachers, upgrading teacher skills through refurbished teacher training programmes and improving the curriculum in lines with the new National Curriculum Framework.

With the expertise of the World Bank, the RMSA will be giving greater emphasis on monitoring of the programme and tracking the funds which will inject accountability into the system. A welcome step in the scheme will be the provision for an “innovation fund” to encourage all stakeholders to generate new ideas and means for betterment of the scheme.

The government expenditure on education is still woefully inadequate, at less than 4 per cent of the GDP. While elementary education accounted for 1.7 percent of GDP, secondary education (lower as well as higher secondary education sectors) which accounted for 0.9 per cent of GDP. In this year’s budget 2012- 13, the government has allocated Rs 3214 crore for RMSA, a 20 per cent increase over last year.

Despite the increased financial assistance through agencies like the World Bank, a section of education experts believe that dropouts being a major problem plaguing secondary education both among boys and girls; vocational or employment oriented education should be an integral part of this scheme. If the RMSA indeed performs the manner in which it has been envisaged, then the country’s demographic dividend can be successfully harnessed to provide the world economy the largest pool of trained and skilled labour.

Source: Business Standard, April 12, 2012

World Bank plans to fund skill development in India

The World Bank (WB) plans to fund skill development initiatives in India and provide technical assistance to the National Skill Development Corp. (NSDC) in executing its mission. The World Bank may initially provide Rs. 480 crore (Rs. 4.8 billion) and lend further support depending on the success of the initiative, according to four people familiar with the development. The government has moved a proposal in this regard and the file is now with the Planning Commission for its formal approval. A senior Planning Commission official said the panel was evaluating the proposal. The official declined to be named.

NSDC, which has a mandate to train as many as 150 million people over the next 10 years, currently has a corpus of Rs. 1,500 crore (Rs. 15 billion), of which it has committed Rs. 1,147.9 crore (Rs. 11.47 billion) for skill training so far. “We have a larger mission and welcome support from bilateral and multilateral agencies,” an NSDC spokesperson said. NSDC has so far signed agreements with 46 training partners — 38 companies and eight sector skill councils. The partners have a target to train 60.6 million people by 2022. Vocational training in India is a $20 billion business annually, according to a July report by Kotak Securities Ltd. Around 475 million people will need training by fiscal 2022, it said.

Indian officials involved in the skill development initiative have been in touch with the bank for over a year, according to at least two World Bank officials, who did not want to be named. The bank is also eager to provide “technical assistance” as it has a “wide experience of skill development in several countries”. The officials said the funds can be used for developing innovations in skill training, giving better exposure to partners and putting in place a central monitoring system for mapping the growth of the sector, among other things. If required, foreign experts can be drafted to help Indian officials, an idea the Planning Commission may not support as such experts charge high consulting fees.

“NSDC represents an innovative approach to training and to skilling. We would help the skill mission if asked,” said John Blomquist, lead economist, human development, South Asia, World Bank. “All action has to be selective and in close partnership with the (Indian) finance ministry.” During the formation of NSDC in 2008-09, the government had said that the funds required for imparting skills to 150 million people through the body would be to the tune of Rs. 15,000 crore, and that the government would tap multilateral institutions among others to ensure that the funds are made available.

During a skill council meeting on 19 January, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India will need about 260 million skilled people by 2018 and around 340 million by 2022, according to estimates. These studies also indicate that India needs to provide quality training to around 80 million people in the next five years. There is a significant gap between the requirement and the supply which, unless checked, will constrain India’s economic growth, Singh said.

Source: Mint, February 14, 2012

>World Bank Group’s new education strategy focuses on ‘learning for all’

>From its overarching goal of ‘schooling for all’ as its education strategy in the past, the World Bank Group made a paradigm shift in its new Education Strategy 2020 to ‘learning for all’ in the developing countries. This is driven by the conviction that the driver of development eventully is what individuals learn, “both in and out of school, from preschool through the labour market,” the Bank said.

In its Education Strategy 2020 unveiled in Washington on Tuesday with the accent of investing in people’s knowledge and skills to promote development, the World Bank Group said since launching a project to build secondary schools in Tunisia in 1962, it had traversed a long way by investing $69 billion globally in education via more than 1,500 projects in developing countries including India over the years.

Its financial support for education has risen over the decade since the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were set, surging to more than $5 billion in 2010. Alongside, its private sector lending window, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) began focusing on the education sector since 2001, it has invested $500 million in 46 private education projects.

Sector-wide financing
Stating that the Bank Group has not stood still since it adopted its last strategy in 2001 by moving closer to client countries by decentralising its operations with 40 per cent of staff now in country offices, the Bank said it has also innovated financially through greater use of sector-wide financing, pooled funding, performance-based instruments and other approaches. It has also recognised the burgeoning role of the private sector in education by carving out a Health and Education department at IFC.

The new education strategy, while aiming at building on these changes, focuses on learning because “better learning for all students worldwide is vital to economic growth, better development” with ”significantly less poverty depending on the knowledge and skills that people gain, not the years spent in classrooms.”

The strategy explicitly concedes that “while a diploma may open doors to employment, it is a worker’s skills that determine his or her productivity and ability to adapt to new technologies and opportunities. Knowledge and skills also contribute to an individual’s ability to heave a healthy, fulfilling life, an educated family and be involved in their community as citizens and voters.”

It reaffirmed its commitment to helping countries get all children into school by the 2015 deadline for the MDGs. But with conditions in the world changing rapidly — from a record surge of young people at the secondary, tertiary levels in West Asia and emerging economies to the rise of new middle-income countries anxious to boost their economic competitiveness by training more skilled workforces — developing countries must “transform gains in schooling into improved learning outcomes,” it cautioned.

New strategy
While skill levels in the workforce predict economic growth rates far better than average schooling levels even as the skills young people acquire in school are inadequate, “the bottom-line of the Bank’s new education vision for 2020 is: invest early, invest smartly and invest for all,” according to Ms. Elizabeth King the World Bank’s Education Director and lead author of the new strategy.

The new strategy calls for robust systems to improve the quality and reach of education in three areas. First, the Bank’s Group would prioritise and finance reform of countries’ education systems as a whole to improve the quality of student learning. It will thus focus on increasing accountability and results as a complement to provide school buildings, teacher training and textbooks. Strengthening education systems meant aligning their teacher policies, governance, management, financing and incentive mechanisms with the goal of learning for all.

Second, the Bank Group would match new education financing with results. Highlighting instances of recent innovative projects in Bangladesh, Jamaica and Vietnam that have used results-based financing and other spurs to improve student and school performance, it said these could serve as models for other countries.

Finally, the Bank Group will build a leading knowledge base for education reform of what works and what does not in education reform, using impact evaluations, learning assessments and benchmarking tools that are being developed. By benchmarking education reform progress against global best practices, the Bank Group will help countries diagnose the strengths and infirmities in their reform bids and better target future investments.

Source: Business Line, April 15, 2011

India gets $1 billion from World Bank to improve education

The World Bank has approved two education projects worth $1.05 billion for India, designed to boost the number of children enrolling in and completing elementary school, and to improve the quality of engineering education across the country. India has made significant progress in meeting its education goals, especially at the primary level, the bank said announcing additional support for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a nationwide programme aimed at providing quality elementary education to all children. The bank has supported the SSA with two IDA credits totaling $1.1 billion since 2003.

“SSA – the largest ongoing Education for All (EFA) programme in the world – has been remarkably successful, particularly in achieving greater access to elementary education,” said Roberto Zagha, the World Bank Country Director for India. Between 2003 and 2009 the number of children reportedly enrolled in elementary education in India increased by 57 million to 192 million. More than two-thirds of this increase took place in government schools. “The number of children out of school declined from 25 million to 8.1 million during that same period, a truly remarkable achievement.” The $750 million in additional financing for the Second Elementary Education Project will enable SSA to expand activities related to increased access at upper primary level (grades 5-8), increase elementary level completion rates, and improve learning outcomes for the full elementary cycle (grades 1-8).

The $300 million for the second Technical Engineering Education Quality Improvement Project (TEQIP) will support some 200 competitively selected engineering education institutions to produce higher quality and more employable engineers. It will also scale up post-graduate education, research, development and innovation at these institutions, the bank said. This is the second phase of TEQIP, an envisioned 15-year phased programme initiated with the first phase from 2002 to 2009.

The project builds on the significant results achieved in the first phase of the project which supported 127 institutions and thousands of faculty members in well performing institutions such as National Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela, the College of Engineering Pune, the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) Hyderabad, and Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra.

India gets $1 billion from World Bank to improve education

The World Bank has approved two education projects worth $1.05 billion for India, designed to boost the number of children enrolling in and completing elementary school, and to improve the quality of engineering education across the country. India has made significant progress in meeting its education goals, especially at the primary level, the bank said announcing additional support for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), a nationwide programme aimed at providing quality elementary education to all children. The bank has supported the SSA with two IDA credits totaling $1.1 billion since 2003.

“SSA – the largest ongoing Education for All (EFA) programme in the world – has been remarkably successful, particularly in achieving greater access to elementary education,” said Roberto Zagha, the World Bank Country Director for India. Between 2003 and 2009 the number of children reportedly enrolled in elementary education in India increased by 57 million to 192 million. More than two-thirds of this increase took place in government schools. “The number of children out of school declined from 25 million to 8.1 million during that same period, a truly remarkable achievement.” The $750 million in additional financing for the Second Elementary Education Project will enable SSA to expand activities related to increased access at upper primary level (grades 5-8), increase elementary level completion rates, and improve learning outcomes for the full elementary cycle (grades 1-8).

The $300 million for the second Technical Engineering Education Quality Improvement Project (TEQIP) will support some 200 competitively selected engineering education institutions to produce higher quality and more employable engineers. It will also scale up post-graduate education, research, development and innovation at these institutions, the bank said. This is the second phase of TEQIP, an envisioned 15-year phased programme initiated with the first phase from 2002 to 2009.

The project builds on the significant results achieved in the first phase of the project which supported 127 institutions and thousands of faculty members in well performing institutions such as National Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela, the College of Engineering Pune, the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) Hyderabad, and Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Mesra.