The World Bank has transferred $7.5 million as a new installment to a project supporting education reform in Jordan. This new funding boosts the total project payments from loans and grants since its approval in 2017 to $200 million.
According to the data viewed, the bank allocated $7.425 million this June to the project, which aims to expand the provision of early childhood education services, improve student evaluation, and enhance teaching and learning conditions for both Jordanian children and Syrian refugees.
The World Bank’s commitments to the project amount to nearly $300 million, funded on behalf of the Ministries of Education and Public Works and Housing, with about $100 million remaining for subsequent payments.
In December 2017, the World Bank approved the project’s initial commitment of $147.7 million, and further agreed in June 2020 to an additional funding of $81.4 million. The project grants total $70.9 million, while the government is committed to providing $622 million to the project.
The project supports the expansion of access to early childhood education for more than 32,000 children, in addition to formulating a new framework for professional standards and evaluation for teachers, including related teacher training. The project also supports a new system to ensure quality education in early childhood and introduces a new evaluation for students and hybrid learning strategies.
The World Bank, when approving the additional funding, set a goal to support the Jordanian government’s efforts in addressing the education challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic, increasing enrolment in pre-primary education, and transitioning the General Secondary Education Certificate (Tawjihi) to a competence-based digital system.
The Bank reaffirmed its commitment to supporting Jordan in dealing with the multiple impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak and allocated technical and financial resources to assist Jordan in enhancing its health sector response and providing emergency cash transfers to poor families who have lost their income.
The additional funding for the project is expected to support the Jordanian government’s goal of enrolling all five-year-old children in schools starting from the 2020-2021 academic year.
The project also supported additional interventions to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, specifically to ensure the sustainability of remote learning innovations implemented as a result of school closures and to ensure minimum health and safety standards for a safe return to schools.
