By IANS,
Kathmandu : The World Bank Wednesday announced a bounty of $130 million for Nepal’s classrooms meant to pay teachers’ salaries and boost education for children and women.
The funding is intended for the impoverished Himalayan republic’s `School sector reform programme’ that is part of the government’s 15-year national action programme.
The bank said it will meet a slice of the programme’s expenditures over the next five years covering all levels of school education.
Eight development partners will also pool their resources to support the programme as well as five partners who will provide direct support.
The total cost of the five-year programme is estimated to be about $2.6 billion, of which pooled development partners have committed approximately $500 million.
With teachers waging a series of protest movements in Nepal over non-payment of salaries and other dues, the World Bank 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 will also finance a range of activities intended to ensure basic education for all children in the 5-12 age group, prepare pre-school age children for basic education 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 seven million students in more than 30,000 schools.”
However, more than 30 percent of School Leaving Certificate examinees fail to graduate from grade 10, and the average pass rate for students from community schools is around 50 percent. Pass rates at higher secondary level are much worse, in the range of 25 percent.
The programme therefore aims to improve the quality and relevance of secondary education through development of standards settings for curricula, education materials, teachers, school environment and examination systems.
The project is a blend of credit ($71.50 million) and grant ($58.50 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.