The World Bank has decided to extend an additional soft loan of $1.05 billion (Rs 4,772 crore) to the government to improve the quality of education under two major schemes on elementary and technical education. The bank will provide a soft loan of $ 750 million (Rs 3,409 crore) to the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, which aims at universalisation of elementary education.
It will also provide a loan of $300 million (Rs 1,363 crore) for Technical Education Quality Improvement Project scheme to support some 200 engineering education institutions to produce more employable engineers. Both loans carry low interest rate to be paid over a period of 35 years.
Government will have a grace period of 10 years to pay back, a World Bank official said here. The World Bank has been supporting the SSA since the beginning. It has already provided a loan of $1.1 billion so far. The bank decided to extend the loans in view of the encouraging results achieved under both the schemes.
The SSA, started in 2002, has been successful in achieving greater access to elementary education, said Roberto Zagha, 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. Enrolment gains were especially strong among girls and children from socially disadvantaged households.
The additional financing will enable SSA to expand activities related increased access at upper primary level, increase elementary level completion rates, and improve learning outcomes for the full elementary cycle. "We expect that these activities will lead to a greater percentage of children attending and completing elementary education," said Sam Carlson, World Bank Lead Education Specialist and project team leader for SSA.
More than 50 per cent of SSA resources will be allocated over the next three years for activities to improve student learning, such as teacher training, remedial education, provision of free textbooks and other learning materials to enable more activity-based learning. Similarly, the soft loan for TEQIP will support selected engineering education institutions to produce higher quality and more employable engineers.
The World Bank has already provide $250 million under TEQIP since its beginning in 2002. The additional funding for the second phase of the scheme will also scale up post-graduate education, research, development and innovation at these institutions. In the first phase (20020-09), the scheme supported 127 institutions and thousands of faculty members.
It has made a considerable impact on quality of education by implementing institutional and policy reforms. TEQIP's second phase will respond to two new sector issues - prepare more Post-Graduate students to reduce shortage of qualified faculty, and produce more Research and Development in collaboration with industry. The credits are provided by the International Development Association, the World Bank's concessionary lending arm.
