WB to give Rs. 1.26bn grant for school sector

Kathmandu, Sept. 4

The World Bank has agreed to provide an additional grant of US$10.85 million (Rs. 1.26 billion) to the School Sector Development Programme (SSDP).

The money will be used to maintain access to basic education and continued learning for children amid the COVID-19 crisis.

The grant will finance activities to support remote learning programmes through television, radio and the learning portal as well as printed learning packs for children who do not have access to media or internet.

It will also support communication campaigns and teacher professional development programmes and help strengthen the Education Management Information Systems. The Grant will also support State and local governments to support safe reopening of schools and continued learning of children.

An agreement was signed between the Ministry of Finance and WB on Friday afternoon.

Joint Secretary at the Ministry of Finance Shreekrishna Nepal and WB Country Director for the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka,  Faris Hadad-Zervos signed the agreement.

The SSDP is a sector-wide programme supported by IDA credit of US$185 million, together with support from Asian Development Bank, European Union, Finland, Global Partnership for Education (GPE), Japan International Cooperation Agency, Norway, USAID, UNICEF and REACH Multi-Donor Trust Fund administered by the World Bank.

The programme aims at improving quality, equitable access, and efficiency of basic and secondary education in Nepal.

The additional grant is from the GPE COVID-19 Accelerated Funds and will contribute to the implementation of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology’s COVID-19 contingency plan to mitigate and respond to the potential impacts of the pandemic on the education sector.

Nepal said that the grant will help mitigate learning loss for children due to the impact of the COVID-19.

“The grant provides much needed support to the government to respond to the impacts of the pandemic to enable continuity of learning during school closures, enable schools to safely resume and mitigate the impacts on students and teachers, including loss of learning time and psychosocial impacts,” he said.  

Likewise, Hadad-Zervos said that while supporting the immediate needs for safeguarding access and learning for children, especially girls, the additional grant would support the broader resilient recovery efforts of the government and help build back better the education sector in Nepal.

Published in The Rising Nepal daily on 5 September 2020.