World Bank Credit Of US$150 Million To Promote Secondary Education Development In Tanzania

Washington DC, June 8, 2004 – The World Bank today approved an International Development Association (IDA) financing of US$ 150 million consisting of a grant of US$ 26.4 million and a credit of US$$123.6 million in support of a program to promote secondary education in Tanzania.

“The project will promote policy reforms to improve access and equity in secondary education, notably through the provision of grants to schools for recurrent and development expenditures, setting up of a scholarship scheme for qualified but poor students and by attracting and retaining qualified teachers”, said Donald B. Hamilton, the World Bank’s Task Team Leader for the project.

According to Hamilton, the program  will tackle the three main challenges that currently face secondary education in Tanzania: increasing access, raising quality, and strengthening management .

Tanzania has one of the lowest secondary gross enrollment ratios anywhere in the world. Only about 9 percent of the relevant age group attends secondary education, compared with an average of nearly 30 percent for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole.

Private secondary education providers enroll about 40 percent of all students but face major constraints to increase their enrollment due to restricted access to investment resources and limited affordability by households. Community schools, in which communities provide buildings while the government finances teachers and some operational costs, have provided partial relief to the problem.

The IDA financing will help rehabilitate and construct classrooms and schools, provide water and sanitary facilities in new and existing schools, expand public schools to rural areas as well as to poor and remote communities unable to provide their own schools and/or unable to attract private schools.

The Secondary Education Development Program (SEDP),  will also provide  grants for recurrent and development expenditures  to both government, community  and non-government  institutions, improve learning outcomes of students, ensure more intensive usage of teaching resources and enable a more effective management of secondary education by the public administration. The number of subjects in the curriculum will be reduced, its content updated and improved; textbook quality will be improved and prices reduced; and SEDP will introduce a continuous in-service training for teachers.

A final component of the project will focus on reforming secondary education service management and delivery by devolving major administrative and management functions, including student admission and placement, teacher recruitment and deployment, to lower levels of the system both public and private.

The IDA credit of US$ 123.6 million, which is part of the US$ 150 million financing, is provided at the standard commitment fee of 0.5 percent, a service charge of 0.75 percent, and a maturity of 40 years, including a 10-year period of grace. The Government of Tanzania and other development partners will finance the project with an additional US$ 93 million.

For more information on the World Bank’s work in sub-Saharan Africa visit:  http://www.worldbank.org/afr