Japan to give 500m yen for primary education

DOT Desk
Japan will provide 500 million Japanese yen or approximately Tk 36.89 crore in grants to Bangladesh for the Fourth Primary Education Development Programme aimed to impart quality education to all children from pre-primary to Class-V, reports The New Age.
‘In this regard, Exchange of Notes and Grant Agreement will be signed on December 10 at the NEC-2 conference room in the capital’s Sher-e-Bangla Nagar area,’ said an official at the economic relations division.
The official said that division secretary Monowar Ahmed would sign both documents while Japanese ambassador to Dhaka Hiroyasu Izumi would sign the Exchange of Notes while chief representative of the JICA, Bangladesh office Hitoshi Hirata would sign the Grant Agreement.
Officials at the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education said the programme would strengthen the capacities of institutions at all levels of primary education offices and increase support for schools and upazilas with more resources linked to their needs and performance.
The programme was expected to directly benefit 18.6 million students, about 340,000 teachers and more than 65,000 schools that were under the management of the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education.
The government will provide $13.2 billion of the total $14.7 billion programme cost while the rest will be co-financed by the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, UNICEF and the European Union.
Bangladesh achieved almost universal access to primary education by 2016 with a 98 per cent net enrollment rate. The efficiency of primary education had also improved.
The funding will help the government to improve the quality and equity of primary education through the Fourth Primary Education Development Programme.
The programme aimed to reduce double-shift operations at schools by recruiting more teachers and building more classrooms, step up teacher education and provide needs-based training for teachers and teacher educators, reform examinations and assessments as well as enrich teaching and learning resources such as with digital materials.
It will also expand education services for out-of-school children through learning centres, bring more children with special education needs and disabilities to schools, improve school-level performance and management and strengthen institutions.
To improve the learning environment, the programme will provide gender-segregated and disabilityaccessible sanitation and safe water in almost all schools.
New construction and major retrofitting will meet disaster risk resilience requirements, especially in disaster prone areas.