INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION Public Disclosure Authorized
PROJECT APPRAISAL DOCUMENT
ON A
PROPOSED GRANT
IN THE AMOUNT OF SDR 36.1 MILLION (US$50 MILLION EQUIVALENT)
Public Disclosure Authorized TO THE
REPUBLIC OF GUINEA
FOR A
PROJECT FOR RESULTS IN EARLY CHILDHOOD AND BASIC EDUCATION
June 17, 2019
Public Disclosure Authorized
Education Global Practice Africa Region
Public Disclosure Authorized This document has a restricted distribution and may be used by recipients only in the performance of their official duties. Its contents may not otherwise be disclosed without World Bank authorization.
The World Bank Guinea Education Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education (P167478)
CURRENCY EQUIVALENTS
Exchange Rate Effective April 30, 2019
Currency Unit = Guinean Franc (GNF ) GNF 1.77= US$1 SDR 0.72163 = US$1 US$1.38 = SDR1
FISCAL YEAR January 1 - December 31
Regional Vice President: Hafez M. H. Ghanem Country Director: Soukeyna Kane Senior Global Practice Director: Jaime Saavedra Chanduvi Practice Manager: Meskerem Mulatu Task Team Leaders: Scherezad Joya Monami Latif, Karine M. Pezzani
The World Bank Guinea Education Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education (P167478)
ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS
AWPB Annual Work Plan and Budget BSD Office for Strategy and Development (Bureau de Stratégie et Développement) CE Second -Third Grade Levels (Cours Elémentaire) CEC Community Center (Centre d’Encadrement Communautaire) CEPE Primary School Completion Certification (Certificat d’Etudes Primaires Elémentaires) CM Forth – Fifth Grade Level (Cours Moyen) CP First Grade Level (Cours Primaire) CPF Country Partnership Framework Interministerial Steering and Coordination Committee (Comité Interministériel de Pilotage et de CPIC Coordination) CPS Continuous professional development CRI Corporate Results Indicators CSNE National Strategic Education Committee (Comité Stratégique National de l’Education) DA Designated Account Division of Administrative and Financial Offices (Division des Affaires Administratives et DAF Financières) DCE Community Delegation for Education (Délégation Communautaire de l'Education) General Directorate of Planning, Statistics and Development of Education (Direction Générale DGSPDE de la Planification, des Statistiques et du Développement de l’Education) DLI Disbursement-Linked Indicator DLR Disbursement-Linked Result Directorate for Community Centers and Early Childhood Education (Direction Nationale des DNCECP Centres d'Encadrement Communautaire et du Préscolaire) National Directorate for Elementary Education (Direction Nationale de l'Enseignement DNEE Elémentaire) DNEF National Directorate for Basic Education (Direction Nationale de l’Enseignement Fondamental) DPE Prefectural Office for Education (Délégation Préfectorale de l'Education) DRH Directorate for Human Resources (Direction des Ressources Humaines) DSEE Primary Education Delegates (Délégations Scolaires de l’Enseignement Elémentaire) E&S Environmental and Social ECD Early Childhood Development ECE Early Childhood Education EEP Eligible Expenditures Programs EGRA Early Grade Reading Assessment EMIS Education Management Information System ENI National Teacher College (Ecole Normale d’Instituteurs) ESP Education Sector Plan FCV Fragility, Conflict and Violence FGB Training for School-Based Management (Formation à la Gestion de la Base scolaire) FM Financial Management FoCEB Pooled-Fund for Basic Education (Fonds Commun pour l'Education de Base) GDP Gross Domestic Product GER Gross Enrollment Rate GIS Geographic Information System
The World Bank Guinea Education Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education (P167478)
GIZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GoG Government of Guinea GPE Global Partnership for Education GPI Gender Parity Index GRM Grievance Redress Mechanism HCI Human Capital Index IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction and Development ICT Information Communication Technologies IDA International Development Association IDB Islamic Bank for Development IFR Interim unaudited Financial Report IGEN General Education Inspection (Inspection Générale de l'Education Nationale) Institute of Research and Pedagogical Action (Institut National de Recherche et d’Action INRAP Pédagogique) IRE Regional Education Inspections (Inspections Régionales de l’Education) IRR Internal Rate of Return ISSEG Higher Education Science Institute (Institut Supérieur des Sciences de l’Education de Guinée) IVA Independent Verification Agency M&E Monitoring and Evaluation Ministry of Social Action, Female Promotion and Childhood (Ministère de l’Action sociale, de la MASPFE Promotion Féminine et de l’Enfance) Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training (Ministère de l’Emploi et de la Formation MEFTP-ET professionnelle, de l’Emploi et du Travail) Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et MEHSR de la Recherche scientifique) MELQO Monitoring Early Learning Quality and Outcomes Ministry of National Education and Literacy (Ministère de l’Education Nationale et de MEN-A l’Alphabétisation) Ministry of Planning and Economic Development (Ministère du Plan et du Développement MPDE Economique) MOB Ministry of Budget MOF Ministry of Finance MOPS Ministry of Public Service MTEF Medium Term Expenditures Framework NBD National Directorate of Budget NER Net Enrollment Rate NGO Non-Governmental Organization NPF New Procurement Framework NPV Net Present Value PCU Project Coordination Unit (Unité de Coordination du Projet) PDO Project Development Objective PFM Public Financial Management PIM Project Implementation Manual National Plan for Economic and Social Development (Plan National de Développement PNDES Economique et Social) PP Procurement Plan
The World Bank Guinea Education Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education (P167478)
PRODEG Ten-Year Education Plan for Guinea (Programme Décennal d’Education pour la Guinée) PSE Education Sector Program (Programme Sectoriel pour l’Education) PTA Parent Teacher Association RESEN Country Report on National Education System (Rapport d’Etat du Système Educatif National) RMR Risk Mitigation Regime RRA Risks and Resilience Assessment SCD Systematic Country Diagnostic National Coordination Service for Evaluation of the Education System (Service National de SNCESE Coordination de l’Evaluation du Système Educatif) National In-Service Department (Service National de la Formation et de Perfectionnement du SNFPP Personnel) National Service for Infrastructure and Education Facilities (Service National des SNIES Infrastructures et Equipements Scolaires) STEP Systematic Tracking of Exchanges in Procurement TA Technical Assistance TOR Terms of Reference UNICEF United Nations Children's Emergency Fund
The World Bank Guinea Education Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education (P167478)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DATASHEET ...... 1 I. STRATEGIC CONTEXT ...... 7 A. Country Context...... 7 B. Sectoral and Institutional Context ...... 9 C. Relevance to Higher Level Objectives ...... 17 II. PROJECT DESCRIPTION ...... 19 A. Project Development Objective ...... 20 B. Results Chain...... 21 C. Project Components ...... 22 D. Project Beneficiaries ...... 26 E. Rationale for World Bank Involvement and Role of Partners...... 27 F. Lessons Learned and Reflected in the Project Design ...... 28 III. IMPLEMENTATION ARRANGEMENTS ...... 29 A. Institutional and Implementation Arrangements ...... 29 B. Results Monitoring and Evaluation Arrangements...... 30 C. Sustainability ...... 30 IV. PROJECT APPRAISAL SUMMARY ...... 31 A. Technical, Economic and Financial Analysis ...... 31 B. Fiduciary ...... 33 C. Legal Operational Policies ...... 36 D. Environmental and Social ...... 36 V. GRIEVANCE REDRESS SERVICES ...... 39 VI. KEY RISKS ...... 39 VII. RESULTS FRAMEWORK AND MONITORING ...... 42 ANNEX 1: Implementation Arrangements and Support Plan ...... 56 ANNEX 2: Detailed Project Description ...... 68 ANNEX 3: Economical and Financial Analysis ...... 81 ANNEX 4: Map ...... 86
The World Bank Guinea Education Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education (P167478)
DATASHEET
BASIC INFORMATION BASIC_INFO_TABLE Country(ies) Project Name
Guinea Guinea Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education
Project ID Financing Instrument Environmental and Social Risk Classification
Investment Project P167478 Moderate Financing Financing & Implementation Modalities
[ ] Multiphase Programmatic Approach (MPA) [ ] Contingent Emergency Response Component (CERC)
[ ] Series of Projects (SOP) [✓] Fragile State(s)
[✓] Disbursement-linked Indicators (DLIs) [ ] Small State(s) [ ] Financial Intermediaries (FI) [ ] Fragile within a non-fragile Country
[ ] Project-Based Guarantee [ ] Conflict [ ] Deferred Drawdown [ ] Responding to Natural or Man-made Disaster
[ ] Alternate Procurement Arrangements (APA)
Expected Approval Date Expected Closing Date
02-Jul-2019 30-Jun-2024
Bank/IFC Collaboration No Proposed Development Objective(s)
The Project Development Objectives are to improve access to, and the quality of early childhood and basic education in the Project Areas and to strengthen the capacity of the education system to deliver better results.
Components Component Name Cost (US$, millions)
Improving equitable access to pre-school education 30.20
Improving pre-school and basic education quality using technological innovation 8.40
Strengthening education sector management capacity 9.70
Project management and monitoring and evaluation 1.70
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The World Bank Guinea: Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education (P167478)
Organizations Borrower: Ministry of Economy and Finance Implementing Agency: Ministry of Education MEN-A
PROJECT FINANCING DATA (US$, Millions)
SUMMARY-NewFin1
Total Project Cost 50.00
Total Financing 50.00
of which IBRD/IDA 50.00
Financing Gap 0.00
DETAILS-NewFinEnh1
World Bank Group Financing
International Development Association (IDA) 50.00
IDA Grant 50.00
IDA Resources (in US$, Millions)
Credit Amount Grant Amount Guarantee Amount Total Amount National PBA 0.00 50.00 0.00 50.00
Total 0.00 50.00 0.00 50.00
Expected Disbursements (in US$, Millions)
WB Fiscal Year 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 Annual 3.85 8.98 13.56 13.83 9.78
Cumulative 3.85 12.83 26.39 40.22 50.00
INSTITUTIONAL DATA
Practice Area (Lead) Contributing Practice Areas Governance, Health, Nutrition & Population, Social Protection Education & Labor
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The World Bank Guinea: Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education (P167478)
Climate Change and Disaster Screening This operation has been screened for short and long-term climate change and disaster risks
Gender Tag
Does the project plan to undertake any of the following? a. Analysis to identify Project-relevant gaps between males and females, especially in light of Yes country gaps identified through SCD and CPF b. Specific action(s) to address the gender gaps identified in (a) and/or to improve women or Yes men's empowerment c. Include Indicators in results framework to monitor outcomes from actions identified in (b) Yes
SYSTEMATIC OPERATIONS RISK-RATING TOOL (SORT) Risk Category Rating
1. Political and Governance ⚫ High
2. Macroeconomic ⚫ Substantial
3. Sector Strategies and Policies ⚫ Substantial
4. Technical Design of Project or Program ⚫ Substantial
5. Institutional Capacity for Implementation and Sustainability ⚫ Substantial
6. Fiduciary ⚫ Substantial
7. Environment and Social ⚫ Moderate
8. Stakeholders ⚫ Moderate
10. Overall ⚫ Substantial
COMPLIANCE
Policy Does the project depart from the CPF in content or in other significant respects? [ ] Yes [✓] No
Does the project require any waivers of Bank policies? [ ] Yes [✓] No
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The World Bank Guinea: Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education (P167478)
Environmental and Social Standards Relevance Given its Context at the Time of Appraisal
E & S Standards Relevance
Assessment and Management of Environmental and Social Risks and Impacts Relevant
Stakeholder Engagement and Information Disclosure Relevant
Labor and Working Conditions Relevant
Resource Efficiency and Pollution Prevention and Management Relevant
Community Health and Safety Relevant
Land Acquisition, Restrictions on Land Use and Involuntary Resettlement Relevant
Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Management of Living Natural Relevant Resources
Indigenous Peoples/Sub-Saharan African Historically Underserved Traditional Not Currently Relevant Local Communities
Cultural Heritage Relevant
Financial Intermediaries Not Currently Relevant
NOTE: For further information regarding the World Bank’s due diligence assessment of the Project’s potential environmental and social risks and impacts, please refer to the Project’s Appraisal Environmental and Social Review Summary (ESRS).
Legal Covenants
Section II B.1 Description: Section II B.1: No later than three months prior to the submittal of a withdrawal request in respect of DLRs 2.3, 2.4, 3.3, 3.4, 4.4, 5.2, and 5.4, set forth in Schedule 4 to this Agreement and as set forth in Section III below, the Recipient, through MEN-A, shall engage, under terms of reference and with qualifications satisfactory to the Association, the Independent Verification Agent, for purposes of carrying out the Independent Verification. Section II B.2 Description: Section II B.2: The Recipient, through MEN-A, shall ensure independent monitoring and evaluation of the Project, through the carrying out of an Independent Verification certifying the extent to which, in respect of DLRs 2.3, 2.4, 3.3, 3.4, 4.4, 5.2, and 5.4,: (a) Eligible Expenditures under the Project have been incurred in compliance with the arrangements provided for in this Agreement, and in the Project Implementation Manual; (b) the Disbursement-Linked Indicators have been met; and (c) the DFIL has been adhered to by the Recipient. Section II B.3 Description: No later than three months after the end of each Project Implementation Year in which a
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DLR for which an Independent Verification is required is set to be achieved as set forth in Schedule 4 to this Agreement, the Recipient shall furnish to the Association a complete Independent Verification Report including all the findings and results from the Independent Verification, as well as the certifications from the Independent Verification Agent of the degree of achievement of the respective DLRs. Conditions
Type Description Effectiveness Article IV, 4.01 (a): The Recipient has prepared and adopted the PIM, in form and manner satisfactory to the Association, with the specifications described in Part B of Schedule 2 to this Agreement.
Type Description Effectiveness Article IV, 4.01 (b): The Recipient has hired a coordinator, a financial management specialist, a procurement specialist and a monitoring and evaluation specialist for the PCU, in a form and manner, and with terms of reference, qualifications and experience, all satisfactory to the Association. Type Description Disbursement Section III, B.1: Notwithstanding the provisions of Part A above, no withdrawal shall be made: (a) for payments made prior to the Signature Date; or (b) for any DLI, until and unless the Recipient has furnished evidence satisfactory to the Association that the respective DLRs under said DLI have been achieved.
Type Description Disbursement Section III, B.2: With respect to withdrawals under Category 2, and as provided under paragraph B.1(b) of this Section, payments shall be made upon timely submittal by the Recipient of a withdrawal request acceptable to the Association and pursuant to the DFIL. Such withdrawal request shall include evidence in form and substance acceptable to the Bank of: (i) EEPs incurred, as presented in a Customized Statement of Expenditures Report; and (ii) supporting documentation confirming the Borrower’s achievement of the respective DLR, as referred to in Schedule 4 to this Agreement, and as set forth in the Verification Protocols. The Association may accept withdrawal requests submitted pursuant to the provisions of this section, in respect of any DLR, except for Scalable DLRs, achieved prior to the date by which such DLR is set to be achieved.
Type Description Disbursement Section III, B.3: Notwithstanding the provisions of paragraphs B.1(b) and B.2 of this Section, if the Association is not satisfied that any DLI under Category (2) has been achieved by the date by which the respective DLI is set to be achieved, as set forth in Schedule 4 to this Agreement, the Association may at any time, and by notice to the Recipient, decide, in its sole discretion to: (a) in respect of Scalable DLRs:
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The World Bank Guinea: Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education (P167478)
(i) authorize the withdrawal of such lesser amount of the unwithdrawn proceeds of the Financing then allocated to the said Scalable DLR which, in the opinion of the Association, corresponds to the degree of achievement of said Scalable DLR calculated as set forth in the Verification Protocols; (ii) authorize that the unwithdrawn amount by which the corresponding disbursement for a partially achieved Scalable DLR had been reduced, be carried forward to the immediately subsequent withdrawal, pending further achievement of the respective Scalable DLR; and/or (iii)cancel or reallocate all or a portion of the proceeds of the Financing then allocated to said Scalable DLR. (b)in respect of any DLR other than a Scalable DLR: (i) withhold the unwithdrawn proceeds of the Grant then allocated to said DLR until the Association is satisfied that said DLR has been fully achieved; or (ii)(1) reallocate all or a portion of the proceeds of the Grant then allocated to said DLR to any other DLR; and/or (2) cancel all or a portion of the proceeds of the Grant then allocated to said DLR.
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The World Bank Guinea: Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education (P167478)
I. STRATEGIC CONTEXT
A. Country Context
1. Guinea is endowed with considerable natural resources but remains one of the ten poorest and least competitive countries in the World. Guinea has almost 246,000 square kilometers of land with a population of 12.7 million in 2017 that increased from 6.2 million in 1990. Sixty four percent of the population live in rural areas compared to 36 percent in urban areas. The country held its first truly democratic elections in 2010 and the new government, which was re‐elected in 2015, has sought to attract foreign investment. However, the Ebola crisis (2013–2016) and the fall of international commodity prices thwarted many of these attempts. The country has abundant land and water as well as iron ore, bauxite, gold and diamonds. Mining is one of the main drivers of the economy together with agriculture. Per capita growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was very low for most of the past 20 years, averaging 0.6 percent annually during 1998-2016; GDP per capita amounted to only US$508 in 2016, compared to an average of US$1,450 for the Sub-Saharan Africa region. Poverty stagnated at around 55 percent for the period between 2002 and 2012, and simulations using the 2014 census suggest a likely increase in poverty to nearly 58 percent in 2014.1 The incidences of rural poverty are at 65 percent representing a population of 4.3 million, compared with 35.4 percent in urban areas.2 Guinea ranks 141 out of 157 according to the Human Capital Index (HCI)3 which measures the amount of human capital that a child born today can expect to attain by age 18 through five indicators4. This means that a child born in Guinea today will be 37 percent as productive – compared to 56 percent globally - when she grows up as she could be if she enjoyed complete education and full health. Access to basic services is low, with a small share of the population having electricity (28 percent) and improved sanitation (20 percent). Gender equity remains a work in progress with only 40 percent of girls enrolled in secondary education (against 50 percent for boys). The 2017- 2018 Global Competitiveness Report ranked Guinea 119th out of 137 countries, with large gaps for the quality of institutions, infrastructure, health, education, and financial market development.
2. In August 2016, the Government of Guinea (GoG) approved a new five-year development plan for the period 2016-2020. The National Plan for Economic and Social Development (PNDES)5, aims at fostering higher and more inclusive growth during 2016–2020 and prioritizes human development particularly education and also commits to adding resources to the sector. Policy slippages, delays in structural reforms, and external vulnerabilities constitute the main risks to the success of the PNDES and Guinea’s outlook as they could suppress medium- term growth and threaten debt sustainability. Such delays and slippages might arise from sociopolitical tensions, especially during elections or periods of union activity and from capacity and financial constraints that make it harder to complete planned investment projects.
1 Country Partnership Framework for Guinea (FY2018-FY2023) of May 10, 2018. Report Nr. 125899. The National Institute of Statistics is carrying out a household survey in 2018 that will provide new poverty estimates. 2 Country Partnership Framework for Guinea (FY2018-FY2023) of May 10, 2018. Report Nr. 125899GN. 3 World Bank Human Capital Index Report, October 2018. 4 The five indicators are: the probability of survival to age five, a child’s expected years of schooling, harmonized test scores as a measure of quality of learning, adult survival rate (fraction of 15-year old that will survive to age 60), and the proportion of children who are not stunted). 5 National Plan for Economic and Social Development (Plan National de Développement Economique et Social): November 2017.
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3. Guinea is not on the World Bank's harmonized list of fragile situations because it does not host a peacekeeping or political peace‐building mission and has a 2017 CPIA of 3.2.6 However, the country remains fragile and vulnerable to internal and external shocks. The International Development Association (IDA 2018) has classified Guinea as an "exceptional FCV [fragility, conflict, and violence] risk mitigation regime," along with Niger, Nepal, and Tajikistan. Guinea has therefore been granted access to the IDA18 Risk Mitigation Regime (RMR), which is designed to provide eligible countries enhanced support to reduce the risk of FCV. The RMR aims to provide a dedicated financing mechanism to incentivize investments for conflict prevention and provide countries with additional financing of up to one-third of their indicative IDA18 allocation. The overall objective of the RMR in Guinea is to support Guinea’s efforts to reduce the structural drivers of fragility and conflict that were identified in the 2017 Risks and Resilience Assessment (RRA), while at the same time supporting quick wins in a context of instability driven by social discontent.
4. Guinea faces a complicated set of interrelated drivers of FCV that need to be understood in terms of intersecting rather than isolated factors. Key drivers of fragility have emerged from the 2017 RRA: (i) weaknesses in the delivery of services that undermine state legitimacy. Indeed, poor service delivery (whether in health, education, security, electricity or water provision) and the population’s concomitant lack of support for state institutions constitute a key driver of fragility; (ii) unregulated and rapid urbanization increase risks of political instability and social unrest; (iii) the decline of global commodity prices (80 percent of the country’s foreign exchange derives from mining exports, mainly bauxite and iron ore, as well as gold and diamond), coinciding with Guinea’s Ebola epidemic (2013–2016), had a severe impact on the economy. Although affordability has improved in recent years, Guinea’s foodstuff remains costly and economic downturns have an immediate effect on the poor; (iv) youth face a poorly functioning education system and exceedingly high levels of structural unemployment and underemployment; and (v) while ethnicity is socially unproblematic in everyday life, Guinea’s experience with multiparty politics in recent years has been marked by worrying degrees of identity-based political tensions.
5. Such fragility can be exacerbated more broadly by weak social inclusion, including in terms of gender. Gender inequality, in addition to youth exclusion, is a pressing concern if Guinea is to achieve its population dividend. Women face severe constraints to accessing resources, markets, services, and socio-political spaces (such as representation and participation in local development processes). The causes of gender gaps are multiple and include the limited investments in human capital, the lack of opportunities for income generating activities, and the limited access to good quality infrastructure and financial resources in rural areas. A number of sociocultural constraints also hinder women’s potential to participate in economic activities. In their communities, women do not have the same level of decision-making power as men and have less opportunities to actively participate in decision-making bodies, resulting in women’s reduced ability to shape the country’s socio-economic development and lower per capita incomes, rendering them vulnerable to sexual and economic exploitation and social exclusion.
6 However, it is worth noting that with a 2017 CPIA of 3.2, Guinea is right at the threshold of the Bank’s Fragile and Conflict Affected Situations (FCS) definition – and has gone below a 3.2 score in eight out of the past ten years.
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B. Sectoral and Institutional Context
6. The Guinean formal education system follows a 3-6-4-3 structure, with three years of pre-primary education, six years of mandatory primary education (premier cycle, enseignement fondamental), followed by four years of lower secondary (second cycle, enseignement fondamental) and three years of upper secondary education (Figure 1). Within pre-primary there are four different types of modalities in Guinea: (i) crèches for children between 2 and 24 months; (ii) kindergarten for children between 2 to 4 years old; (iii) preschools for children from 3 to 6 years old; and (iv) Community Centers (Centres d’Encadrement Communautaires, CEC) for children from 3 to 6 years old in rural areas. The system is administered by three main ministries, the Ministry of National Education and Literacy (Ministère de l’Education nationale et de l’ Alphabétisation, MEN-A), the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche scientifique, MESRS), and the Ministry of Employment and Vocational Training (Ministère de l’Enseignement technique, de la de la Formation professionnelle, de l’Emploi et du Travail, MEFTP-ET).
Figure 1: Education System Organigram
Source: MEN-A, 2019
7. The education sector is characterized by inadequate financial resources, highly centralized ministerial bodies, and poor institutional capacity. Education expenditure is only 2.4 percent of GDP and 13 percent of public expenditures; the latter is the lowest in the region, which averages 17 percent. Several different ministries oversee various areas and levels of education (Figure 1) and the central government influence extends to the
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The World Bank Guinea: Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education (P167478)
regional, prefectural and sub-prefectural levels. The decentralized Ministry units have inadequate human and financial resources, as well as poor support from the central Ministries. Moreover, salaries account for 84 percent of MEN-A's national budget, leaving little room for additional resources to enhance the quality of the education system. The decentralized levels of MEN-A such as the Regional Education Inspections (Inspections Régionales de l’Education, IRE) and Prefectural Office for Education (Délégations Préfectorales de l’Education, DPE), receive practically no state resources for their functioning apart from the preparation of examinations. In spite of the best laid plans to increase resources for the education sector, the actual distribution of resources remains insufficient. For instance, resource constraints do not allow for adequate education planning, supervision, coaching and training within schools that are key to improving the quality of teaching and learning. There is also a chronic lack of recurrent resources at schools, which leaves them unable to make even the most basic expenditures such as the procurement of essential teaching-learning materials or building maintenance. Furthermore, there is a lack of accountability at each level and limited orientation around learning outcomes and results in education. The fragmented system and poor operational and resource management contribute to disconnects between funding decisions and policy goals, policies and needs, and policies and implementation.
8. Teacher training is administered by three separate ministries. Preschool and primary school teacher pre- service training is housed under the MEFTP-ET, while the MESRS is responsible for pre-service teacher training of middle and high school teachers. The Teacher College (Ecole Normale d’Instituteurs, ENI) and the Higher Education Science Institute (Institut Supérieur des Sciences de l’Education de Guinée, ISSEG) are responsible for preservice training of preschool and primary and lower secondary teachers and high school teachers respectively. The MEN-A however is responsible for in-service teacher training although in-service teacher training for preschool teachers has only recently fallen under its jurisdiction and is still being absorbed into the system. There is a disconnect between pre-service and in-service training, as well as between training in general and the needs that teachers have.
9. Teacher recruitment is overly centralized leading to an inefficient distribution of human resources. While teacher recruitment and salaries are done through the Ministry of Public Service, the Ministry of Education is responsible for the deployment of teachers, and a lack of information coming from the decentralized levels within the ministries as well as un-harmonized data systems between the ministries has led to inefficient recruitment and deployment. The Government published, on May 3, 2019, a joint Order7 established between the MEN-A, the Ministry of Public Service (Ministère de la Fonction Publique, de la Réforme de l’Etat et de la Modernisation de l’Administration) and the Ministry of Budget to transfer responsibility for the recruitment of teachers to the regional and prefectural offices of MEN-A based on local requirements, to achieve a better needs-based distribution of teachers.
10. The Government of Guinea (GoG) has made considerable efforts to improve the access to and quality of basic education in the past 10 years. The sector has experienced increases in enrollment to all subsectors of education. Enrollment in preschool remains low but increased substantially from 6.9 percent in 2008 to 12 percent in 2017.8 Between 2010 and 2017, Guinea saw an 81 percent jump in school and classroom construction which has contributed to the gradual increase in net enrollment rates from 41.6 percent in 1999 to 73.4 percent in 2017 (Figure 2). The majority of primary schools are public, enrolling 69 percent of students. In the lower and
7 Arrêté conjoint A/2019/1597/MFPREMA/MENA/MB), portant sur la déconcentration des concours de recrutement du personnel enseignant du MEN-A. 8 Unless otherwise stated, all data presented in this note are derived from the provisional 2016 – 2017 Annual National Primary Cycle Statistics and 2016 – 2017 National Preprimary Statistics from the Office of Strategy and Development (BSD) of the Ministry of Education (MEN-A).
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upper secondary subsectors, enrollment decreased by 3 percent and 1 percent respectively.9 Despite these important advances, Guinea faces serious challenges related to improving access and quality of education.
Figure 2: Growth in Net Enrollment Rate 90.0% 85.0% 80.0% 80.2% 76.5% 75.0% 74.2% 70.0% 71.0% 72.2% 71.0% 65.0% 70.0% 66.5% 60.0% 62.6% 61.0% 61.2% 63.1% 55.0% 58.0% 57.6% 50.0% 45.0% 40.0%
Net Enrolment Rate Girls Net Enrolment Rate Boys
Access and Gender Equity
11. Enrollment rates continue to fall short of universal primary education goals, and there are large numbers of out-of-school children. With an estimated 1.5 million out-of-school children, over one million of whom are youth who have never enrolled in school, the out-of-school rate stands at approximately 44 percent for school aged children between the ages of 5 and 16.10 Out-of-school children are more likely to be poor and living in rural areas.11 As amplified below, a substantial portion of the enrollment challenge consists of a failure to keep children in school once they have enrolled, and the question is to identify what can be done to retain the children in school until the end of the primary cycle with qualified teachers.
12. Guinea is working to reach gender parity in basic education. The Gender Parity Index (GPI) in the overall gross enrollment rate (GER) is 0.83. At the pre-primary level, the GPI is 0.47 in the private sector (predominantly urban) and 1.0 in the community pre-schools (CECs, located in rural areas). At the primary level the GPI is 0.81, while it is 0.38 at the secondary level. Girls are more likely to be out of school and to repeat grades (particularly at the end of the primary cycle) compared to boys. The largest disparities exist in rural regions, and the main issues are the poverty and poor service delivery. For example, the regions of Faranah and Kankan have the lowest GER GPI of 0.68 and 0.62 percent, respectively. Under this situation, the challenge becomes: (i) maintaining parity in enrollment in regions that are close to accomplishing it; (ii) increasing gender parity in regions that are lagging; and (iii) decreasing the number of out-of-school children. This will require inter alia community advocacy on the benefits of education targeted at parents and girls and eliminating school-level factors that discourage female enrollment and attendance.
9 Rapport d’Etat du Système Educatif National (RESEN) 2018. 10 Public Expenditure Review, 2015. 11 58 percent of the population live below the national poverty line; the majority of them live in rural areas. Country Partnership Framework, 2018.
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Limited and Inequitable Early Childhood Education Provision
13. Enrollment in pre-primary education remains low, despite the well-documented positive impacts early childhood education has on improving child development, school readiness, enrollment in primary education, and improved learning outcomes. Improvements to Early Childhood Education (ECE) access and quality have the potential to bolster enrollment in primary education, particularly given the tendency for overage enrollment, as well as learning outcomes. ECE used to be housed in the Ministry of Social Action, Female Promotion and Childhood (Ministère de l’Action sociale, de la Promotion Féminine et de l’Enfance, MASPFE), which also oversees and implements the Early Childhood Development (ECD) national policy. This policy has a legal, institutional and normative framework for early education and child protection services that target children under five years of age and their families. In August 2017, responsibility for ECE was transferred to the MEN-A. This triggered the Government’s interest in strengthening the access and quality of preschool, and updating ECE policies, which were last developed in 2007. This is critical given that efforts to improve ECE have been constrained by a fragmented and ineffective system of delivery and coordination.
14. Just nine percent of children attend pre-primary school, although there has been a significant increase in actual enrollment from 89,000 students in 2006 to 256,121 in 2017. Low participation rates reflect a lack of supply and burdensome fees, which are significant barriers, particularly for poor families. ECE access is highest in three out of eight regions, predominantly in urban areas - Conakry, Kindia and N’Zérékoré. Eighty one percent of institutions are private, 19 percent are CECs and less than one percent are public institutions with just two public ECE centers in Conakry.12 In short, though nearly all communities have access to primary education, the vast majority – particularly in rural areas – do not have a pre-school classroom in their catchment areas. For all types of ECE, families have to pay tuition and matriculation fees, among other direct expenses such as uniforms and food, which pose significant burdens for low income households. Overcrowding is common; there are on average 56.4 children per CEC classroom, ranging from 41.2 in Mamou to 85 in Conakry. Private sector pre- school classrooms are even more crowded, with an average of 60.4 students per classroom.
15. No formal teacher-training track has existed for preschool until recently, when the ENI initiated a pre-service program for ECE teachers that trains roughly 30 teachers per year. As a result, only 359 of the 6,125 teachers working in ECE programs have an education background in ECD.13 As such, ECE tends to be treated as an addition to the early grades that prepares children to read and write; teaching practices used in class are rarely play- based, and pedagogical materials and textbooks are applied with primary school-based learning techniques. Parents lack information on the importance of early stimulation for children under five years of age, which constrains demand for pre-schooling.
16. Community early childhood education centers exist in policy but have not been fully realized. The CECs, or community centers, were created to increase access to preschool in rural regions and provide families with a complete ECD package of services, including good hygiene practices; early stimulation; parental education in health, nutrition and good parenting; and literacy for mothers. CECs are built on community lands and should be supported by community groups. But this modality has not been developed as a comprehensive ECD center, and CECs are used as preschool classrooms with a community teacher. Currently, there are 406 CECs in Guinea, of which approximately 60 percent are not functional due to lack of teachers and resources. This is due in part
12 A third public ECE center is currently under construction in the department of Conakry. 13 Annuaire Statistique Education Préscolaire, Ministère des Affaires Sociales, de la Promotion Féminine et de l’Enfance, 2016-2017.
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to the heavy recurrent expenses associated with its multi-year model that aims at providing comprehensive services.
Limited Schools and Learning Inputs
17. The network of basic schools is expanding but remains inadequate. From 2006 to 2016, new school construction increased the absorptive capacity by 32 percent which reduced some inequalities of access between regions. Yet, in regions outside of Conakry, 40 percent of children between the ages of six and ten are still out of school. About 61 percent of primary schools in Guinea do not offer all six grades; of these, 80 percent are public schools. These numbers indicate that approximately 31 percent of the primary student population are attending schools where they cannot complete primary schooling. This phenomenon is predominantly seen in rural areas where the percentage of schools that do not offer all six grades of the primary cycle varies from 53 (Kindia) to 80 percent (Labé). Rural schools follow the model of urban schools with one, two, or three classrooms. In the absence of classrooms and teachers, children abandon school which increases the drop-out rate. The “multigrade” classroom, which is one recommended solution currently used, is not formalized because of the lack of didactic material and insufficient teacher training. Classrooms are often overcrowded, with an average of 43 students per classroom at the primary level. The physical state of many older schools is less than satisfactory, as schools receive no budget for physical upkeep and are generally not maintained.
18. Learning conditions and physical spaces (especially in rural areas) contribute to inadequate access to education and poor learning outcomes. Statistics on the availability of textbooks indicate a significant deficit of reading and math textbooks especially in the first and last years of primary school, with the regions of Boké, Conakry and Kindia being those where the needs for textbooks were the most important during the 2015 - 16 school year.14 The presence of functioning latrines promotes girls attendance at school. However approximately a fourth of public primary schools do not have latrines, with large regional disparities. Furthermore, approximately 75 percent of public schools do not have access to water (77 percent in rural areas and 64 percent in urban areas).
19. There are high rates of late entry, drop-out and repetition, and student transition rates are low. In 2016-17, only 78 percent of students started first grade at the appropriate age. The overall repetition rate within primary education was 10.5 percent. Repetition is more pronounced at the end of the sub-cycle grades and especially in Grade 6, with 16.5 percent of children repeating the year (Figure 3). The primary completion rate has been roughly 60 percent since at least 2010, with the rate for girls hovering around 50 percent. Together, these highlight a difficult transition from primary to secondary education, and high rates of over-age students; 38 percent of students in the primary cycle are over age.
14 Rapport d’Etat du Système Educatif National (RESEN) 2018.
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Figure 3: Primary Repetition Rates 30.0% 25.6% 25.0%
20.0% 16.5% 15.0% 13.1% 10.7% 10.7% 12.4% 11.1% 10.9% 10.5% 10.2% 10.3% 10.5% 10.0% 7.5% 7.3%
5.0%
0.0% CP1 CP2 CE1 CE2 CM1 CM2 Total
Repetion rates Girls Repetion rates Total
20. Low participation rates, combined with population growth projections, especially at the secondary level, highlight the substantial demographic challenge Guinea faces moving forward. The Guinean population is very young and rapidly growing especially in urban areas. The school age population comprises almost half of the population in Guinea. In parallel, the secondary school aged population is growing at 3.3 to 3.4 percent annually, faster than the population. Given the already low participation rates, increasing, or even maintaining the current coverage and participation will be challenging.15 The challenge of expansion is exacerbated by unmet access needs in the poorest regions and communities at all education levels.
Low and unequal student learning outcomes
21. The MEN-A has basic student assessment measures in place in primary grades. For example, the “Certificat d’Etudes Primaires Elémentaires” or Primary School Completion Certification (CEPE) measures a student’s knowledge at the end of primary school. Additionally, the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) is implemented every year to the “Classe Primaire” (CP) and “Cours Elémentaire” (CE) cycles of primary. At the secondary level, students are tested at the end of lower secondary and end of upper secondary through the “Brevet d’Etudes du Premier Cycle” (BEPC) and “Baccalauréat” (Bac), respectively. There is a need to strengthen the technical capacities of the MEN-A department responsible for the development, administration and analysis of learning outcomes exercises; as well as to strengthen the link between analysis, stakeholder feedback and policy.
22. Poor educational outcomes are a major concern. On average, students in private schools achieve better results than their peers in public and community schools, and large differences in student achievement are seen between regions, with rural regions having the lowest student outcomes. At the basic education level, almost 90 percent of children in grades two and three cannot read simple text, which perpetuates the country’s high illiteracy rate of 30 percent.16 In public schools, the EGRA test questions administered in 2017 in the first (CP2) and second (CE1) cycles in primary education, as well as basic reading activities in these same grades show troubling outcomes. For example, results show that the CP2 students have on average a very low level with an
15 Public Expenditure Review, 2015. 16 Country Partnership Framework (CPF) 2018.
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average score in 2016 of 39 out of 100 against an average score of 24 out of 100 in 2014. The results also show significant variation in the areas of skills assessed. In 2016, the average score varied from 20 out of 100 in writing to 69 out of 100 in vocabulary. In addition, the average score does not exceed 25 out of 100 in reading text or invented words (a measure of decoding skills). In the same year, only 68 percent of the candidates for the Primary School Completion Certification (CEPE) passed the exam (Figure 4)17.
Figure 4: CEPE Exam Pass Rates 200000 70%
160000 68%
120000 66%
80000 64%
40000 62%
0 60% Total Females
Candidates Passed Success %
Teachers and School Directors
23. Although the sector has been proactive in addressing challenges related to teacher deployment and competency in the past two years, there are still remaining challenges. To address dissatisfaction and issues related to deployment and the cost of living, teachers received a 40 percent increase in salary in 2017 as a result of negotiations with the Government. In 2016, 51 percent of total teachers were deployed in urban areas and 49 percent in rural areas. Data shows that although staffing is positively correlated to the number of students enrolled in a school, in 2016 about 18 percent of deployment of teachers was linked to criteria unrelated to student enrolment. Mamou, Kankan, Labé, and Faranah remain the most short-staffed. The student to teacher ratio in public schools was 66:1 in rural areas and 57:1 in urban areas in 2016-2017. The ratios have been deteriorating since 2010, indicating that the Government is having difficulty keeping up with demographic growth and increased participation rates. Further, these ratios conceal variations between grades, with the early primary grades suffering the most from overcrowding. The teaching corps is largely male; at both the pre- primary and primary levels, only 31 percent of teachers are female.18
24. A strategy and accompanying formula and tool for the effective deployment of teachers, known as the “transfer scale” has been in place since 2013, however it faces many obstacles. The purpose of the tool is to enable rational and transparent deployment of teachers. Among the obstacles in implementation reported by the Directorate of Human Resources (Direction des Ressources Humaines, DHR) of MEN-A, are: (i) dysfunctions in the structures in charge of implementing the new tool, which has resulted in the lack of information needed for informed deployment – such as sharing information regarding where student needs and teacher vacancies
17 Annuaire Statistique, Enseignement Primaire 2016-2017, Bureau de Stratégie et de Développement (BSD) 18 The percentage at the pre-primary level refers only to staff at the Centres d’Encadrement Communautaires (CECs).
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are; (ii) a lack of support from the central level to the decentralized level; and (iii) inadequate communication about the revised deployment tool. The analysis of needs and efficient deployment of personnel is further constrained in part by the fact that posts are not codified and tied to specific locations. The Government has, in the past year, taken measures to address the implementation of this formula and plans to transfer responsibility for the recruitment of teachers to the deconcentrated level. The new measures also include the hiring of teachers who are graduates of ENI and ISSEG only. The Government will need support to implement the new policy effectively, and, multi-grade teaching.19 Trainings are nearly entirely donor funded, built around unsustainable models that involve professional development activities outside the school environment, and often delivered in an ad-hoc in nature.
25. There is little or no use of digital technologies as a means to support professional development and teachers’ classroom practices. Given the critical role that teachers play in the classroom, there is a pressing need for a harmonized teacher development system to be in place. The system should be based on clearly articulated standards, provide sustainable opportunities for continuous professional development and place a greater emphasis on school-based teacher development approaches that incorporate greater use of information technologies. There is substantial evidence that teacher professional practice is developed most effectively in the classroom and school settings, provided they receive sustained support from their peers and school leaders and are provided with complementary materials.20 The supply and use of complementary materials should take advantage of low-cost digital solutions, which have been shown in different settings to lead to improved teaching practices and children’s learning involvement, provided they are used to support strengthened teaching-learning practices 21.
26. School Directors are neither trained nor equipped with the skills necessary to manage a school or to take on the role of instructional coach. The national training centers, ENI and the ISSEG, which are responsible for preservice training, do not include school management in their training programs. Moreover, School Directors are selected from groups of experienced teachers, and as a result receive no preservice or in-service training for their new roles. Their role needs to be strengthened as leaders of school-based teacher development, including their capacity to use, and facilitate the effective use of, digital technologies as a means for teacher professional development and strengthening teaching-learning practices.
27. The pool of primary school inspectors is aging, and many are leaving the service to retire. In recent years there has not been adequate recruitment of inspectors for the preprimary and primary subsectors and as existing cohorts age, the pool of inspectors diminishes. Moreover, school inspections take place at the sub-prefectural level. However, inadequate decentralization has led to insufficient inspectors, long delays between school visits, unharmonized inspection tools that are paper-based, often outdated and are of limited utility for providing pedagogical support, and lack of means to act on any inspection observations. In parallel, no systematic
19 In-service teacher training evaluation report, 2017, MEN-A. 20 See e.g. Westbrook, J., Durrani, N., Brown, R., Orr, D., Pryor, J., Boddy, J., and Salvi, F. (2013). Pedagogy, curriculum, teaching practices and teacher education in developing countries: final report. Education rigorous literature review, EPPI-Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London. pp. 61-62. 21 For a discussion on the successful use of digital technologies and open education resources in Bangladesh, see e.g. Power, T., Shaheen, R., Solly, M., Woodward, C., and Burton, S. (2012). English in Action: School Based Teacher Development in Bangladesh. The Curriculum Journal, 23(4):503–529. The Sub-Saharan African consortium ‘Teacher Education in SSA, TESSA’ has found that the combination of digital technologies and education resources has had a ‘significant impact on changing the identity and practices of teacher educators and a profound impact on teachers themselves.’ Hartley k. and Barasa F. (2012) Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Formative Evaluation Report, p. 24. See also Wolfenden, F., Buckler, A. and Keraro, F. (2012) OER Adaptation and Reuse across cultural contexts in Sub-Saharan Africa: Lessons from TESSA (Teacher Education in Sub Saharan Africa) Journal of Interactive Media in Education. Pp. 16 ff.
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professional development for inspectors exists, and often inspectors are simply senior school teachers who were hired as inspectors with no accompanying training. Nonetheless, the inspection service is keen to strengthen its pedagogical support role, which should be an integral part of teacher professional development at the school- level, leveraging technology to jump-start strengthened quality.
Limited Accountability and Incomplete Data Systems
28. The sector suffers from limited accountability with, as mentioned previously, highly centralized decision making and a lack of overall citizen engagement. In a move to address this, school and district grants are being implemented in the multi donor-financed Pool-Funding for Basic Education Project (FoCEB) (P148127). The primary school grants were initially tied to school improvement plans aimed at improving school quality and pedagogy through specific activities that can be managed and implemented by the school community. However, there is little evidence about their effectiveness, and subsequent grants have not been conditional on improvements or results obtained through previous year school improvement plans. While an evaluation of the school grants showed a positive impact for teachers and students, only pedagogical projects – instead of school projects - could be implemented because of the lack of contributions from communities and the Government. Further, the financing mechanism is cumbersome, and the underlying grant financing not financially sustainable. While FoCEB has also implemented community participatory monitoring of a selected set of key educational services such as teacher absenteeism, the scale has been limited, without a systematic assessment of its impact.
29. Data and monitoring systems are established but need to be strengthened. The MEN-A Office of Strategy and Development (Bureau de Stratégie et Développement, BSD), which is mandated to handle education sector statistics has established an Education Management Information System (EMIS) through the annual collection of school data. While EMIS has been efficient at collecting annual data, the BSD has successfully piloted a more efficient data collection methodology using tablets which allows quicker collection and analysis of data while circumventing lengthy procedural steps at decentralized levels of MEN-A. The EMIS can be accessed at central, regional and prefectural levels and can generate numerous indicators down to the sub-prefectural level. However, the system sometimes takes much longer than a year to integrate updated school data, collects too much data too frequently, relies upon outdated demographic data for certain denominators, provides limited public access, has query functions of limited power, and is not accessible through either an inter- or intra-net. Further, there is a lack of harmonization of databases across the MEN-A directorates at central and decentralized levels, which all effectively have their own uncoordinated data collection and databases.
C. Relevance to Higher Level Objectives
30. The proposed operation is in line with Country Partnership Framework (CPF)22 Pillar 1 (Fiscal and Natural Resource Management), Objective 2: Decentralization of service delivery, including health and education, and better engagement of citizens. This objective targets improved school-level financing and community participation, both of which are addressed by sub-component 3.2 “Strengthening systems for planning, monitoring and evaluation”. The objective will also be supported by activities in sub-component 3.2 to strengthen planning and management capacities at local levels, including information systems, which are required to strengthen fiscal management and successfully decentralize service delivery. The project also aligns with Pillar 2 (Human Development), Objective 4: Improved basic education, especially in rural areas. This objective is to be achieved through World Bank support that will increase the share of children benefiting from
22 Country Partnership Framework for Guinea (FY2018-FY2023) of May 10, 2018. Report No. 125899.
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ECD services and pre-school, which is addressed by Component 1 “Improving equitable access for pre-school education”. This objective also entails measures that consist inter alia of the training of primary school teachers in pedagogy and techniques for teaching reading and other foundational skills with a focus on achieving concrete results in the early grades of school; and improving teacher management and deployment through the use of results-based financing. The former is addressed by Component 2 “Improving pre-school and basic education quality using technological innovation”, while the latter is addressed by sub-component 3.1 “Strengthening decentralized management”. The CPF also addresses gender gaps in education and women’s empowerment, including through the sensitization of primary school teachers about the importance of girls’ education; this will be addressed particularly through the in-service training and community mobilization measures supported by Component 2, while also being addressed across all components including through, e.g. sanitation services for girls (Component 1), gender-informed content for teacher professional development (Component 2), attention to gender in decentralized recruitment (sub-component 3.1), and improving gender-related information for decision-makers and stakeholders (sub-component 3.2).
31. The project has been informed by the Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD)23, in particular Pathway 2: Raising Human Capital to inclusive growth, which acknowledges that education remains plagued by low and uneven access, poor quality, weak teacher competencies and deteriorating infrastructure which hamper economic development and civic participation. The issues of equitable access, improvement of the physical environment and teacher competencies are directly addressed by the proposed project through its Components 1 and 2. Further, the project will contribute to improve the efficiency and capacity of the education sector by strengthening planning, M&E, and by decentralizing management of human resources and schools through the introduction of decentralized recruitment and formula-based non-salary school budgets (Component 3).
32. The project is aligned with the RMR’s objectives. The proposed project will seek to address key drivers for fragility such as weakness in the delivery of services, where poor delivery of services contributes to the population’s lack of support for state institutions and youth exclusion and underemployment. The project has been designed to improve delivery of education services and accountability, thus improving beneficiary and civil society perception of the Government to citizen services. The project will focus on expanding access to ECE public provision (Component 1), which will lead to long-term gains as children go through school and enter adulthood, and on improving the delivery of quality education through better teaching pedagogical practices (Component 2). Another important feature of the project will be to support the decentralized management of human resources to achieve a better, needs-based distribution of personnel throughout the country (sub- component 3.1). Finally, the project will include a set of activities to ensure more transparency, participation and accountability through: (i) the use of mobile technology and more reliable information systems to monitor and manage schools (sub-component 3.2.); (ii) the set-up of a more efficient mechanism to transfer recurrent, non-salary related budget to schools for the light maintenance of physical facilities and the purchase of pedagogical materials (sub-component 3.1); and (iii) the piloting of gender-focused activities to promote the welfare of mothers and girls (component 1).
33. The project has also been informed by the “Rapport d’Etat du Système Educatif National” (RESEN), a comprehensive diagnostic of the education sector conducted in 2017-18 which is being used to design the 2019- 2028 Education Sector Plan (PRODEG). The PRODEG is not yet finalized, but the World Bank has participated in its consultations and reviewed draft objectives and priority actions, and the project is fully aligned with these.
23 Systematic Country Diagnostic for Guinea, Overcoming Growth Stagnation to Reduce Poverty Systematic Country, March 16, 2018, Report No. 123649-GN.
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Further, the project will contribute to the fulfilment of the PNDES, 2016-2020, Pillar 3 – Inclusive Development of Human Capital, which aims to increase the primary net enrollment to 77.5 percent and raise the Gender Parity Index to 1.0 by 2020. The project is accordingly aligned with the PNDES’s priority actions, particularly increasing access to, and the quality of, pre-primary schools (through Component 1); improving the quality of teaching-learning practices at primary level through in-service training and using child-centered pedagogy (Component 2); strengthening the management of the education system (Component 3); and improving the availability of complementary school services such as water and sanitation (Component 1). Finally, the project’s focus on increasing equitable access to basic education of improved quality will contribute to the twin goals of the World Bank Group of ending extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity with the bottom 40 percent.
II. PROJECT DESCRIPTION
34. The project will be implemented over a five-year period and is one of the first results-based projects in Guinea. The results-based approach will allow for both a dialogue with counterparts that focuses on results and the project will provide key inputs that will aid in the achievement of the disbursement-linked results (DLRs). The project will use technology to achieve better results in the classroom; to streamline and make more efficient the flow of funds to the school level and strengthen management; and to increase the education management information system’s reliability, timeliness and usage for decision-making. The project will support a series of promising innovations through the use of targeted and cost-effective smart solutions at the classroom, school and system levels, to improve the quality of teaching and learning and strengthen school and system management; using approaches with technological tools based on evidence of results. These interventions are summarized in Box 1 and described further below.
Box 1. Harnessing Technology for Effective Teaching, Learning and Systems Strengthening
System Level • Tablets for annual school census data collection, entry, and quality control; and net-accessible dashboards for decision-making • Tablets and smartphone memory cards for central, prefectural- and sub-prefectural staff including school inspectors to coach/mentor School Directors and teachers for school-based teacher development School Level • Mobile cash for non salary budget subventions to schools • Tablets and smartphone memory cards for School Directors to support school-based teacher development; and to strengthen school management (planning, financial, reporting) Classroom Level • Tablets and smartphone memory cards with materials for professional development and curriculum delivery, to support school-based teacher development and strengthened play- and teaching- learning practices
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A. Project Development Objective
PDO Statement
35. The Project Development Objectives (PDO) are to improve access to, and the quality of early childhood and basic education in the Project Areas and to strengthen the capacity of the education system to deliver better results.
PDO Level Indicators
36. The PDO indicators are:
• Children attending public ECE classes (of which percentage female) (Number) • Early learning quality and outcomes as measured through the Monitoring Early Learning Quality and Outcomes (MELQO) (Text) • Teachers recruited or trained (of which female) – Corporate Results Indicator (CRI/Number) • Students benefitting from direct interventions to enhance learning (of which female) (CRI/Number) • Percentage of stakeholders who use net-accessible dashboards for decision-making, advocacy or informational purposes, as measured by an end-line sample survey of decision-makers (Percentage)
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B. Results Chain
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C. Project Components
Component 1: Improving equitable access to pre-school education (IDA US$30.2 million equivalent)
37. The objective of this component is to increase equitable access to pre-school through a policy-and standard- based expansion of pre-school services in areas of greatest need. The MEN-A’s draft pre-school policy will be revised and approved to enable the provision of one year of pre-school education and will moreover define the minimum standards pertaining to the ECE year including inter alia the educational program, the physical environment, teaching-learning-play equipment and materials, and the teacher’s qualifications. A costed and time-bound strategic plan will also be developed and approved that elaborates how the GoG will phase in its policy and meet its 2030 Ten-Year Education Program for Guinea “Programme Décennal d’Education pour la Guinée” (PRODEG) target for access to early childhood education.
38. The project will provide the construction of 1,000 pre-school classrooms with furniture and pedagogical equipment and materials. The physical environments will be constructed, furnished and equipped according to the standards approved in the aforementioned policy. Altogether, this will provide access to standards-based ECE to approximately 30,000 children aged five years. The GoG is committed to assign a qualified teacher to each newly constructed classroom. The pre-school classrooms will be built as stand-alone structures on the premises of primary schools and will be selected from schools in rural and semi-urban areas, with priority given to schools with overcrowded Grade 1-2 classrooms and a water point; approximately 400 of the schools will be selected on the basis of having a functioning school feeding program.
39. Gender-focused activities promoting the welfare of mothers and girls will be associated with the school canteens (cantine scolaire). The staff managing the feeding program will have their capacities built through training and the provision of basic materials to organize regular sessions to raise awareness and impart practical skills to mothers in the community pertaining to maternal and child health and nutrition, child development and, particularly for girls, timely enrollment in pre-schooling and completion of basic education. This will be part of a broader program of awareness-raising and social mobilization to promote enrollment in early childhood education. The pre-school classrooms will also be constructed at primary schools without a school feeding program. An impact evaluation will be undertaken to see the effect of the school feeding program on pre-school enrollment if any. The evaluation will also investigate the effectiveness of the gender-focused activities mentioned above. The project will promote coordination at the local level with the decentralized governments to promote complementarity and efficiency between the component and any other relevant investments in the same locality (e.g., on education and on programs targeting women).
40. For this component, the release of US$0.5 million of IDA funds will be linked to DLI 1 (with one DLR): “DLR 1.1 Approval of an ECE policy and implementation plan”. The remaining US$29.7 million will be expended against inputs required to construct 1,000 pre-school classrooms, and supply them with furniture and pedagogical-play equipment and materials; and to conduct awareness-raising and social mobilization activities.
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Component 2: Improving pre-school and basic education quality using technological innovation (IDA US$8.4 million equivalent)
41. The objective of this component is to improve the quality of play and teaching-learning practices in pre-school and basic education classrooms, with the latter focusing on early primary grades, through the strengthening of the capacities of teachers, school directors and school inspection and pedagogical support services using mobile, digital technologies.
42. The component will support the development and approval of a national policy on continuous professional development (CPD) that elaborates standards and institutional responsibilities pertaining to professional practices, in-service training and pedagogical support for both pre-school and basic education levels.24 The standards will cover inter alia gradated professional practices for teachers and school directors, and minimum requirements for in-service training, school-based pedagogical support and the monitoring and evaluation of professional development activities. The component will support strengthening the content of a basic in-service training for pre-school teachers to be in line with the newly elaborated standards governing the one-year education program and professional practices; the training will be delivered in two phases to approximately 1,000 new teachers working in the classrooms constructed under Component 1. Roughly 500 staff working at the Directorate for Community Centers and Early Childhood Education (Direction Nationale des Centres d'Encadrement Communautaire et du Préscolaire, DNPCEC), and at the prefectural and sub-prefectural education offices will also be trained on child development and ECE support functions such as resources management and pedagogical support to teachers.
43. At the primary level, the component will strengthen the content of in-service and pedagogical support training programs for “Cours Moyen” (CM) and “Cours Elémentaire” (CE); and develop content for “Cours Primaire” (CP) as well as for multi-grade teaching. The strengthened content will undergo a gender audit, so as to ensure inter alia the inclusion of positive role models for girls and the removal of gender biases; and will include a module on gender aimed at teachers, School Directors and prefectural staff to raise awareness about the importance of girls’ education and measures to ensure enrollment, the creation of a girl-friendly school environment, all aiming at girls’ completion of basic education. Content for the pre-primary and primary levels pertaining to in-service training, pedagogical support and the curriculum will be adapted for use through mobile technologies (e.g. tablets), which will be provided to pre-primary and primary teachers (including School Directors)25, as well as to pedagogical support staff at central, prefectural and sub-prefectural levels. Beneficiary teachers, directors and pedagogical support staff will be trained on how to use the mobile technologies and the content for the purposes of school-based professional development and improving teaching-learning practices. The capacities of school directors and pedagogical support staff will also be strengthened to conduct periodic in-service training and pedagogical support activities at school and sub-prefectural levels, using the mobile technologies. The use of the content through digital technologies as a platform for school-based teacher development and strengthening play- and teaching-learning practices will be first piloted and evaluated in a limited number of schools, prior to the platform being scaled up. In all, approximately 25,000 primary teachers and 500 pedagogical support and supervisory staff will be trained. The project will support as needed the capacity building of a restricted number of pre-primary and/or primary pedagogical support staff to strengthen the
24 While this component and indeed the Project will focus on in service training, the obvious links with the pre-service program will be taken into account in the design of the CPD. 25 Approximately 3,500 of the teachers to be trained will also have functions as school director.
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design of in-service trainings and other continuous professional development activities or systems, through exposure to best practices in other countries.
44. For this component, the release of US$4.5 million of IDA funds will be linked to DLI 2 (with four DLRs): “Strengthened in-service teacher professional development” The remaining US$3.9 million will be expended against inputs required to provide teachers, directors and MEN-A staff at central, prefectural and sub- prefectural levels with digital technologies loaded with content related to teacher professional development, play-teaching-learning practices, and the curriculum; to pilot and refine the model to deliver the CPD policy; and to ensure system capacities to train and support teachers.
Component 3: Strengthening education sector management capacity (IDA US$9.7 million equivalent)
45. Sub-component 3.1: Strengthening decentralized management (US$7.2 million). The objective of this component is to strengthen the decentralized management of human resources and schools through the introduction of decentralized recruitment and formula-based non-salary recurrent school budgets.
46. The project will support the implementation of the Government’s proposed recruitment reform, which transfers responsibility for teacher recruitment from the central to the prefectural and regional levels. The new procedures will be implemented across the country, with a view to achieving a better, needs-based distribution of personnel and increasing the number of female pre-primary, primary and secondary teachers. To this end, the project will support the capacity building of staff particularly at the regional and prefectural levels to implement the reforms. The project will also develop and pilot a formula-based budget transfer to schools to cover non-salary recurrent expenditures targeting maintenance of school facilities and teaching materials. In developing the formula, the project will explore the use of fixed and variable parameters to ensure inter alia that all schools receive a basic amount; that the amount varies depending on the number of students enrolled; and that the budgets compensate schools operating under special circumstances that have unusual cost implications. The pilot will explore novel and efficient funds transfer mechanisms (e.g. mobile money transfers). The formula-based budget model will be fine-tuned following an evaluation of the pilot, and scaled up to at least 3,000 public primary schools. The management capacities will be built for: School Directors and School Development Committees (made up of local stakeholders) to enable them to manage the budget working in close cooperation with, and reporting transparently to, the community; and of relevant supervisory and financial management staff at central, regional and local levels, to support the regular operation, supervision and reporting of the formula-based budget transfers. Citizen’s participatory monitoring of the grant’s transfer and implementation will also be explored at the community level, building on similar pilot mechanisms that already exist in Guinea.
47. For this sub-component, the release of US$6.5 million of IDA funds will be linked to DLI 3: ”The recruitment of teachers is decentralized to the prefectural and regional levels” (with four associated DLRs); and DLI 4: ”Non- salary, recurrent budgets are operationalized at school level” (four associated DLRs). The remaining US$0.7 million will be spent against inputs required to ensure regional and prefectural capacities to carry out decentralized recruitment; and develop the formula for the budget and plan its implementation, pilot operationalization of the formula-based school budget, and build capacities for scale-up.
48. Sub-component 3.2: Strengthening systems for planning, monitoring and evaluation (US$2.5 million; 5 percent of total project cost). The objective of this sub-component is to provide decision-makers and other key
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stakeholders with timely access to critical and accurate information, through strengthened systems for planning, monitoring and evaluation.
49. First, all databases generated by MEN-A will be interlinked through a common platform and integrated portal with upgraded reports generators, levels of disaggregation (covering also gender) and query functions. Second, the annual school-level data collection will be strengthened through the provision of mobile technologies enabling school-level data collection, entry and quality control; the revision of the data-collection format to eliminate unneeded fields and fill data gaps; and sample-based verification of data. Third, the MEN-A’s information systems will be put online and made accessible to stakeholders with user-friendly interfaces and (for decision-makers) data-driven decision triggers, which will include also gender-related information linked to decision areas. General data will be made public on the MEN-A website for greater transparency and citizen feedback. Fourth, capacities will be built at all levels of staff (including of school directors) to fulfil their roles in terms of data entry and processing and information usage. Fifth, the MEN-A’s capacities to use learning achievements for system diagnostics will be strengthened, resulting in a policy framework and strategic plan for system-level performance evaluations as well as strengthened procedures for test development, administration, analysis and reporting. Finally, MEN-A’s strategic planning capacities will be strengthened. This will result inter alia in the production of an evidence-based strategy for equitable, infrastructural development; the piloting of unique identification codes for staff posts (including teachers); and at least two thematic studies of priority interest.
50. For this subcomponent, the release of US$1.0 million of IDA funds will be linked to DLI 5 (with two associated DLRs): “Decision-makers and other stakeholders have access to timely education system information”. The remaining US$1.5 million will be allocated to operationalize mobile technologies for data collection and web- based access to dashboards providing key, disaggregated and query-enabled information; including IT hardware and software development, and capacity building of all staff responsible for data entry and processing, and information management.
Component 4: Project Management and Monitoring and Evaluation (IDA US$1.7 million equivalent)
51. The objective of this component is to support project management, monitoring and evaluation (M&E), and technical assistance (TA) to ensure efficient and effective management of project implementation and the achievement of the DLIs. This component will finance project operating costs for the Project Coordination Unit (PCU) covering, inter alia, non-salary personnel costs associated with seconded staff, the hiring of supporting- role technical assistance, equipment, supervision costs (transportation and per diems) and expenses related to the execution of project administrative, fiduciary, M&E, and reporting functions, as well as expenses related to the monitoring of environmental and social (E&S) aspects. Further, this component will finance any third-party verifications required to verify DLR implementation, as amplified in the DLI verification protocols. It will further finance capacity building activities to strengthen MEN-A’s M&E, E&S and fiduciary functions.
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Table 1: Summary of project budget, by DLI disbursements and inputs funding
Component/Subcomponent DLIs (US$M) Inputs (US$ M) 1. Improving equitable • DLR 1.1: 0.5 in Yr1 (ECE policy and implementation plan) 29.7 for civil works, access for pre-school furniture and education equipment, and TA 2. Improving pre-school • DLR 2.1: 0.5 in Yr1 (policy on in-service training and support) 3.9 for mobile and basic education quality • DLR 2.2: 0.5 in Yr2 (piloting of new policy) technologies and TA using technological • DLR 2.3: 1.5 in Yr3 (training and pedagogical support target innovation achieved) • DLR 2.4: 2.0 in Yr5 (training and pedagogical support target achieved) 3.1 Strengthening Decentralized recruitment 0.7 for TA decentralized management • DLR 3.1: 0.5 in Yr1 (dissemination of decentralized recruitment Joint ministerial resolution) • DLR 3.2: 0.5 in Yr2 (recurrent budget to enable implementation of the Joint ministerial resolution allocated) • DLR 3.3: 1.0 in Yr3 (decentralized recruitment in at least 16 prefectures) • DLR 3.4: 1.0 in Yr4 (decentralized recruitment in all 33 prefectures) Formula-based budget • DLR 4.1: 0.5 in Yr1 (plan to operationalize formula-based school budget) • DLR 4.2: 1.0 in Yr2 (pilot of formula-based budget) • DLR 4.3: 0.5 in Yr3 (evaluation of pilot and roll-out plan approved) • DLR 4.5: 1.5 in Yr5 (allocation of formula-based budget to at least 1,000 primary schools) 3.2 Strengthening systems • DLR 5.2: 0.5 in Yr2 (timely, school-level data input using mobile 1.5 for mobile data for planning, M&E technologies covering at least 90 percent of schools) collection and net- • DLR 5.2: 0.5 in Yr4 (operational dashboards providing key enabling technologies, indicators and query functions used by at least 20 percent of and TA decision-makers) 4. Project management and 1.7 for project M&E coordination, M&E, E&S Total 12.5 37.5 Grand total 50.0
D. Project Beneficiaries
52. The project is expected to benefit approximately 48,000 children (of which approximately 50 percent female) who will attend newly rehabilitated or constructed pre-primary classrooms that are furnished and equipped for a total of 48,000 children; approximately 1,000 ECE teachers, 25,000 primary school teachers (31 percent female), 3,500 primary school directors26 and 500 pedagogical support staff who will receive in-service training and pedagogical support to strengthen play and teaching-learning practices, including through the use of mobile
26 The school directors may also work as a teacher and be included in the 25,000 teachers.
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technologies; and approximately 1.4 million primary school students (44 percent female) attending public primary schools where teachers and directors have been trained and, in some cases, receive a formula-based non-salary recurrent budget for strengthening pedagogical quality and building maintenance. The entire education system (covering over 3.5 million students and 63,000 teachers) will benefit from improved system management resulting from strengthened information systems.
E. Rationale for World Bank Involvement and Role of Partners
53. The existing partnership between major donors in the education sector in Guinea is strong: currently, the World Bank is leading the Pool Fund for Basic Education (Fonds Commun pour l’Education de Base, FoCEB) (P148127) which is funded by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), the Agence Francaise de Développement (AFD) and UNICEF. Moreover, as mentioned earlier, the project design and the intended results are within the framework of the draft PRODEG which is being developed with multi donor participation with the Government. It is likely that the PCU which will be used primarily for coordination of the various government departments implementing the project, financial management and procurement, will also be coordinating the sector program which will be led by the AFD from the donors’ side. This will lead to better donor alignment and coordination of results to be achieved on the ground. Lastly, the project will coordinate with and leverage results being achieved by ongoing World Bank projects in Guinea such as the Support for Local Governance Project (P167884) primarily in overlapping areas of civil service reform (teachers) and citizen engagement.
Table 2: Donor Mapping in Basic Education Sector
Donor Subsector(s) Activities UNICEF Pre-primary, UNICEF currently supports Government through the FoCEB as well as primary and through its work in 40 “communautés de convergence” that are spread secondary across the country. Regarding the “communautés de convergence” UNICEF supports holistic packages of construction and quality to ECE CECs, primary schools and secondary schools. UNICEF interventions include: teacher training, anthropometric visits (in preprimary), director training, textbooks and teacher guides, and construction and Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities. AFD Pre-primary AFD currently supports the Government through the FoCEB and teacher and primary professional development. AFD anticipates that new financing will focus heavily on ECE/ECD. Japan Lower JICA supports construction of middle schools and relevant training of International secondary teacher trainers within the Region of Conakry. Cooperation Agency (JICA) Deutsche Primary GIZ is supporting quality, management, gender, capacity building of Gesellschaft für decentralized structures in the administrative regions of Mamou, Labé Internationale and Faranah Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
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F. Lessons Learned and Reflected in the Project Design
54. The project builds upon prior operations financed and supported by the World Bank, which has been involved in the education sector since 1993. The Stepping up Skills Project (P146474) (approved in 2015) is one of the two active projects in the education sector in Guinea. The project development objective is to boost the employability and employment outcomes of Guinean youth in targeted skills programs. The second active project is the Pooled-Fund for Basic Education which is financed by the Global Partnership in Education (GPE) administered by the World Bank and UNICEF and the AFD supports improving access and learning in basic education and literacy in underserved populations through the provision of teaching and learning materials and school construction, teacher in-service training and the financing of school grants. The proposed project will build on the lessons learned from FoCEB but leverage the results-based nature of the DLI financing modality to place greater emphasis on putting in place systems for continued support to teaching and learning with a view to having a greater impact on improving learning outcomes. The project will also take into account lessons learned from the design of first-time projects using an IPF with DLIs (results-based) modality in the Sub Saharan Africa (SSA) region and globally. The following description reflects the lessons learned which would be used to inform the design of the proposed project. The project design and activities will build on the local existing structures and activities, and are also informed by an on-going Advisory Services and Analytics on mainstreaming citizen engagement in the Guinea portfolio27.
55. The results-based instrument specifically the use of DLIs with predefined implementation progress and performance targets, supported by strategically placed technical assistance, can be a more useful modality through which to support and incentivize sector reforms and overall achievements of results in the sector.
56. Clear articulation of linkages in formulating indicators, and DLI targets as well as protocols spelled out clearly, preferably in an Operations Manual are important in order to focus efforts on factors that are critical to the achievement of project objectives. Furthermore, the DLI targets need to be formulated very carefully to avoid any ambiguity in the gauging of results and to ensure that agreed protocols are followed.
57. Capacity Building and Technical Assistance, not to mention continued World Bank implementation support in an advisory capacity, are critical complements to a results-based financing approach. Continuous and intensive technical assistance to the implementing agencies has shown to result in timely identification and resolution of implementation challenges.
58. Strengthening data systems to improve the quantity and quality of data in the education system leads to better monitoring of outcome data. In Guinea while several databases exist in the education sector, there is little cohesion between them, a lack of focus on monitoring the system as a whole and little will for the disclosure of data and sector wide information to the public—education stakeholders. There needs to be a focus on the use of outcome information and monitoring data which is an essential aspect to the strengthening of data systems. Capacity building and awareness raising of local communities including the school management committee members are also key to promoting inclusive and responsive institutions for service delivery. The project will explore a possible pilot on citizens’ participation in monitoring schools and education services, building on the FoCEB’s pilot of “the Basic Management Training (Formation en Gestion à la Base)” and other
27 The ASA on Mainstreaming Citizen Engagement in Guinea Portfolio (P167844, FY19) seeks to identify and operationalize best-fit citizen engagement tools and activities, by creating synergies across the portfolio, starting from the target key operations in the Education, Decentralization, and Rural Development sectors.
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existing experiences such as participatory monitoring and evaluation tools under the ongoing Third Village Community Support Project (P156422).
59. The use of technology as a teaching learning tool that can deliver better results in classrooms as well as a key monitoring tool that can jump start results on the ground. Technology-enabled solutions are facilitating more effective human capital investments. Computer-assisted instruction and pedagogical support can greatly improve the quality of service delivery. The World Bank Group is providing support to innovations and pilots that use technology to improve learning outcomes in projects all over the world. Lessons from these programs will be used to inform this project’s support to teachers, school directors and inspectors with tablets. In addition, this project will pilot and evaluate the use of tablets in the classroom (for teachers), school directors and school inspectors (in the school itself) for better support to teaching and learning and ultimately improved learning outcomes before taking the program to scale.
60. Strong institutional capacity at all levels is key to smooth implementation, the achievement of results, and the sustainability of interventions in the education sector. The project builds on the existing capacity across line ministry departments which has been strengthened over the years particularly through the implementation of the ongoing Pool Fund and will build and enhance this capacity where necessary such as for example, in the use of tablets in classrooms, or mobile technologies to send money to schools.
III. IMPLEMENTATION ARRANGEMENTS
A. Institutional and Implementation Arrangements
61. Project Implementation. The project will be implemented over a four-year period. The MEN-A is the Government’s entity responsible for implementing the project with the administrative and fiduciary support from the Project Coordination Unit (PCU). The MEN-A is ultimately accountable for meeting the project objectives, and providing oversight, monitoring and evaluation of project activities. The MEN-A is also responsible for providing the overall management of the project and guidance to the PCU as well as MEN-A Directorates and technical units that will be in charge of implementing project activities within their functional missions (including budget action plans, terms of reference (TORs), technical report, etc.). To ensure smooth implementation of Components 2 and 3, it will be important for MEN-A to appoint one specialist in teacher professional development and training, and one specialist in education systems strengthening for the management and coordination of all the technical assistance activities planned under these two components.
62. Project Coordination. The PCU will be responsible for the coordination, and monitoring and evaluation of the project, under the authority of the Minister of MEN-A during the project implementation phase. The PCU will also be responsible for providing administrative and fiduciary support to the Directorates and their technical units. The PCU will be led by a coordinator and will comprise, at a minimum, an assistant to the coordinator, a financial management specialist, a procurement specialist, an M&E specialist and an internal auditor, recruited on a competitive basis. In addition, the PCU will recruit one specialist in environment and one specialist in social safeguards to ensure the monitoring of all environmental and social safeguards activities with relevant entities at MEN-A, including the “Service national des Infrastructures et des Equipements Scolaires” (SNIES) which is responsible for implementing school construction and rehabilitation activities.
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63. Project and Sector Strategic Oversight. The project will use the existing arrangements for strategic oversight, i.e.: two governing bodies will be responsible for the oversight of the project: (i) the Interministerial Steering and Coordination Committee “Comité interministériel de pilotage et de coordination” (CIPC), which will be responsible for ensuring overall implementation of the project and consultation with key stakeholders; and (ii) the National Strategic Education Committee “Comité Stratégique National de l’Education” (CSNE) which will be responsible for approving and ensuring compliance of the annual budgeted plans with the project’s objectives and of the proposed activities with the selected strategies, regularly assessing the effectiveness of strategies and activities, and suggesting adjustment where necessary.
B. Results Monitoring and Evaluation Arrangements
64. The Project Results Framework will be used as the basis for monitoring and evaluation of the project. The PDO and intermediate outcome indicators will be monitored through official Government data, surveys, and progress reports produced by the PCU.
65. At the project level, the PCU will be responsible for preparing a semi-annual report on the technical, physical, and financial progress of the project, including indicators, and will work closely with the MEN-A BSD, which is primarily responsible for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data at the central level. The existing capacity at the BSD is relatively good. The BSD is using the EMIS that can be accessed at central, regional and prefectural levels, and can generate numerous indicators down to the sub-prefectural level. The proposed project will support, through Components 3 and 4, activities to enhance the EMIS, modernize the information systems at MEN-A through the integration of existing databases, and build the capacity of MEN-A staff in monitoring and evaluation and data analysis.
66. Data collection. Data to monitor the project will be drawn from three main sources: (a) statistical data from Government annual publications; (b) surveys; and (c) progress reports from the PCU. The BSD has the overall responsibility of providing the data needed to analyze the progress of the project, including the statistical data and surveys, with the support of the decentralized structures (IREs, DPEs, DCEs, and DSEEs) and School Directors. At the decentralized level, the proposed project will support the use of technologies such as tablets and smartphones for a more efficient, real-time, collection of data.
67. Verification Process for Project DLIs. For the results-based portion of the project, MEN-A will contract one or more Independent Verification Agency (ies) (IVA) with sufficient technical and sectoral expertise to handle the verification procedures of DLRs. Verification protocols have been established for each DLR (details are provided in Section VII). The verification process will be managed by the PCU which will be entrusted to compile the project’s annual financial statements and provide any ad hoc financial reports to follow on the project’s financial activities. Within one (1) month of the achievement (or partial achievement) of the DLRs, MEN-A will notify the IVA to verify results. The IVA will conduct the verification of results and submit the verification report within three (3) months, using the DLI/DLRs Verification Protocol. The World Bank will review the documentation submitted along with the verification report and request any additional information considered necessary. Upon approval, the World Bank will send a formal notification to the Recipient.
C. Sustainability
68. The project’s sustainability is supported by four pillars: strategy, policy/legal provisions, systems and budgets. (i) the project is an integral part of the Government’s education strategy (PRODEG), which has firm political
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backing and a time horizon well beyond the life of the project; while the project itself has strong high-level GoG commitment; (ii) components aimed at strengthening systems in some cases entail legal or policy instruments to be approved, making them more difficult to overturn; (iii) sustainability will be ensured by the project’s strengthening and use of country systems, rather than the creation of parallel systems. In some cases, the strengthening of the existing systems (e.g. for teacher professional development) is designed deliberately to ensure minimal impact on budgets; and (iv) where the project does impact on recurrent budgets, particularly for ECE teacher salaries and school-level budgets, these should be manageable in light of the medium-term budgetary framework, the level of political commitment, and the near-term savings on capital costs (as a result of the maintenance supported by the project).
IV. PROJECT APPRAISAL SUMMARY
A. Technical, Economic and Financial Analysis
69. Technical. The project design has benefited from extensive technical analysis done in-country and based on the global research of literature and good/best practices from the region. The project has been informed by the RESEN, a comprehensive diagnostic of the education sector conducted in 2017-18 which has been used to design the PRODEG; as well as numerous MEN-A reports including for example on the state of in-service training resources and activities produced by the National In-Service Department (Service National de la Formation et de Perfectionnement du Personnel, SNFPP), the Institute of Research and Pedagogical Action (Institut National de Recherche et d’Action Pédagogique, INRAP) and the General Education Inspection (Inspection Générale de l'Education Nationale, IGEN). The World Bank-supported Development Policy Financing series was also consulted, particularly pertaining to the strengthening of service delivery at the community level. Further, a large body of research on the benefits of ECE, conducted by the Work Bank and others, underpins one the project’s central foci; while another focus is supported by a body of research on teaching-learning practices and the underlying need for professional development opportunities and teaching-learning resources. Certain aspects of design have benefited from regional examples of best practice, including the use of mobile-digital financing mechanisms and the codifying of posts. Other aspects have benefited from lessons learned nationally, particularly through FoCEB, about making school budgets operational and effective and about making data collection for information systems more efficient. Extensive research on the introduction of digital technologies has been consulted to ensure that the proposed introduction of mobile technologies will be used to strengthen teaching-learning practices and curriculum delivery rather than reinforce ineffective teaching habits, and to provide professional development opportunities that are sustainable. Finally, the use of DLIs is based on the World Bank’s international experience of their effectiveness as tools to strengthen systems, deployed here particularly to strengthen policy foundations for ECE, teacher recruitment and professional development, and equitable school-level budgets; while incentivizing the government to operationalize reforms in these areas on a sustainable basis, and to strengthen governance and accountability through more reliable and accessible information systems.
70. The project design has also carefully considered yet excluded certain aspects of the education system that require reform. In general, the decision to exclude certain areas was based on the need to limit interventions in order to have a manageable set of integrated interventions with achievable objectives; and on the division of labor between donor partners. In particular, the team considered whether the project should strengthen pre- service teacher training, given the potential for long-term benefit. However, on balance, the focus on reforming in-service training to strengthen its effectiveness and sustainability is technically sound. The main institution
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responsible for pre-service training would require substantial reform and support, which would take away resources and attention from other parts of the project and compromise the project’s development objective. Further, the stock of existing teachers is the most pressing priority as they are in-service; reforms to this system thus hold out the greatest promise for medium- and long-term impact. Finally, the new GPE-financed project is likely to support the strengthening of pre-service training.
71. Expected Development Impact. The project expects to increase pre-primary school enrollment as well as the quality of play-teaching-learning practices at the pre-primary and primary education levels. These in turn should result in better levels of learning and higher rates of primary school completion and transition to secondary. The increased number of years of schooling combined with improved knowledge and skills should eventually result in higher levels of employment and income over the adult working life. Additional benefits are expected from system-management reforms pertaining to teacher recruitment, school-level budgets and information systems. In particular, deconcentrated teacher recruitment will improve the rational and needs-based distribution of personnel, making the teaching force both more effective and efficient. The introduction of non- salary recurrent school budgets will improve the quality of teaching-learning practices, extend the useful life of school buildings, and increase accountability to the local community while enhancing their responsibility to support and oversee school improvements. Together, these will make expenditures and investments for personnel and infrastructure more effective and efficient; and more generally will lead to community-led improvements in school performance. Finally, the efficient and effective management of system resources, as well as system performance, will be enhanced by making information available on a more timely and disaggregated basis to stakeholders including decision-makers, parents and community representatives.
72. Rationale for Public Sector Provision/Financing. The public sector will need to continue and indeed strengthen its support for early and basic education, because of the tendency of households to underinvest in education and an entrenched perception and practice that education is largely a public sector responsibility. The private sector has increased in recent years and covers approximately one quarter of primary students; but private schools are inaccessible to the poorest, unavailable in rural areas, and fundamentally constrained by a lack of financing mechanisms for the poor. The education sector brings individual benefits, though these are delayed and are perceived (with some justification) to be uncertain thus discouraging household investment, particularly among the poor who per force have shorter time horizons, are more exposed to poor quality education and thus uncertain returns and can ill afford exposure to downside risk. At a broader, social level there are numerable benefits to education pertaining inter alia to growth, productivity and health (including better care of the next generation). Individuals are unlikely to internalize these externalities, and so, again, underinvest. For these reasons, public investment in pre-primary and basic education is justified. Further, public interventions as planned under the project pertaining to human resources, maintenance of capital stock, and management information systems as well as strengthening local governance are also likely to create efficiency gains that would not otherwise be achieved.
73. Value Added by the World Bank. The World Bank is well placed to support the pre-primary and primary education sector in Guinea given its global and local operational experience and technical expertise. The World Bank has extensive national experience, having financed or supervised multiple operations in the education sector over the past twenty-five years (most recently the FoCEB); and is able to draw on a deep well of experience and networks based in similar countries across the region. Further, the World Bank’s multi-sectoral capacities will add value given the need to view pre-primary and basic education from a broad perspective, encompassing particularly health and early childhood development. The project will benefit from the World
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Bank’s extensive analytical expertise and research, including for example the World Development Report 2018 (Learning to Realize Education Promise), the 2015 Public Expenditure Review (particularly vol.1 on Education), and the World Bank-supported Guinean Education Sectoral Analysis of 2018. The World Bank is also recognized as a leader in the education sector and has a strong track record of convening and coordinating with development partners and key stakeholders.
74. The cost-benefit analysis provides justification for public sector financing, as amplified in Annex 3. Under the base case, the net present value (NPV) of the project is US$46.3 million and the economic internal rate of return (IRR) is 27.6 percent. The sensitivity analysis includes a harsh low-return scenario that nonetheless yields an NPV of US$27.6 million and an IRR of 16.2 percent, indicating a robust economic case to be made for the project; while the high-return scenario shows an NPV of US$46.3 million and an IRR of 18.5 percent. The economic analysis made two key contributions to project design. First, the high marginal returns to one year of pre- primary education in a context of very low coverage contributed to a sharper focus on increasing access to a reformed program of ECE. Second, the need to ensure a strong link between the considerable sunk capital and recurrent costs at the primary level and learning outcomes – without which long-term economic returns cannot be generated – contributed to a greater attention to strengthening the capacities of teachers and lengthening the useful life of infrastructure. Data will be collected during project implementation about pre-primary and primary enrollment, as well as learning outcomes; these will enable the World Bank to revisit and update the economic analysis at a later date. The project is not expected to negatively impact the fiscal situation of the Government, as the relatively minor increments in recurrent expenditures entailed by the salaries of pre- primary teachers and the school budgets can be contained within forecasts for the budget while over the longer run should be more than recuperated through higher economic activity and savings on capital expenditures. Further, the support to decentralized recruitment and the codifying of posts should serve to alleviate pressure on salary expenditures, which constitute over 80 percent of the recurrent budget in education. As noted above, higher levels of economic output entailed by the NPV and IRR explained above, as well as economic growth forecasts.
B. Fiduciary
(i) Financial Management (FM)
75. The MEN-A is the project implementing agency. It will have overall responsibility for project coordination and implementation with the administrative and fiduciary support of the PCU. The PCU will bear overall responsibility for FM tasks. An FM assessment of the PCU designated to manage the project, was carried out in February 2019. The objective of the assessment was to determine whether the PCU has acceptable FM arrangements in place to ensure that the project funds will be used only for intended purposes, with due attention to considerations of economy and efficiency. The assessment complied with the World Bank Directive Financial Management Manual for World Bank Investment Project Financing operations effective March 1, 2010 and as last revised on February 10, 2017.
76. The FM arrangements for this project will follow similar arrangements in place under FoCEB. The overall FM performance of the current project is Satisfactory. Staffing has remained adequate and proper books of accounts and supporting documents have been kept in respect of all expenditures. The PCU is familiar with the World Bank FM procedures. The audit for the year ended December 31, 2017 was submitted on time and was
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unqualified. The interim un-audited financial reports for the on-going project were also submitted on time and acceptable.
77. The Financial Management Action Plan described below has been developed to mitigate the overall financial management risk: Table 3: Financial Management Action Plan
Action Responsible party Deadline and conditionality 1- Elaborate a project implementation manual MEN-A Before effectiveness including FM procedures 2- Recruit FM staff for project Before effectiveness 3- Purchase or customize accounting software to Three (3) months after generate project financial reports and statements effectiveness 4- Recruit internal auditor for project 5- Recruit an external auditor to audit project annual Six (6) months after financial statement effectiveness
78. Based on the World Bank’s assessment, the residual FM risk for the project is deemed Substantial. The proposed FM arrangements are considered satisfactory in fulfillment of the World Bank’s minimum requirements following the implementation of mitigation measures. The implementing entity will ensure that the World Bank’s Guidelines: Preventing and Combating Fraud and Corruption in Projects financed by IBRD Loans and IDA Credits and Grants are followed under the project.
79. Eligible Expenditure Programs (EEPs). Disbursements under the results-based portion of the project will be made, up to a capped absolute amount, against the following budget line items of the GoG’s annual budget, referred to as EEPs: « Staff salaries » (2.2.1.1.10.01), code PSE 651.1 « index-based salaries and permanent contract staff ».28 From the budget execution report, an extraction of the eligible expenditures will be made and evaluated on an annual basis. The World Bank fiduciary and safeguards policies and guidelines will apply to EEPs, but since the selected EEPs for this operation are technically non-procurable cost items, the World Bank’s procurement guidelines will be applicable only to the component with no DLIs. An analysis of the budget identified the salaries, as EEPs, suitable for project financing. The EEPs include non-procurable items. 80. An assessment of the EEP was undertaken to ensure eligible expenditures can be executed effectively to achieve projected results. The latest Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability Assessment (PEFA)29 indicates that the national system includes sufficient controls to ensure the integrity of the most important salary information. Furthermore, human resources and payroll information are reconciled at least on a quarterly basis.
28 « Dépenses personnel » (2.2.1.1.10.01), code PSE 651.1 « salaires indiciaires et contractuels permanents ». 29 PEFA, Mars 2018
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Table 4. Eligible Expenditure Programs
Identified Eligible Expenditure Program Eligible Expenditure Amount (US $ M)
EEP Budget 2017 2018 2019 Y1 Y2 Y3 Y4
Total salaries 106 132 142 142 142 142 142
Disbursement of Grant 5.0 2.0 2.5 3.0 DLI as percentage of EEP 1.4% 1.8% 2.1% 3.5%
2017 and 2018: executed budgets / 2019 to Y4 are forecasts
81. For the last two years, budget execution rate of this budget line is around 99 percent and we expect the same rate for next coming years.
82. An independent verification agency will be contracted on an annual basis to conduct third-party verification for all project DLIs prior to their submission to the WB. In addition, an independent verification agency will be contracted to audit on an annual basis the Eligible Expenditure Program. Such independent verification shall be conducted in accordance with the verification protocols established in the Project Implementation Manual and, inter alia, confirm the actual spending status of the EEPs, said assessment and confirmation to be included in the bi-annual EEP Spending Reports.
(ii) Procurement
Procurement rules and Procedures
83. The MEN-A will carry out procurement for the proposed project in accordance with the World Bank’s “Procurement Regulations for IPF Borrowers” (Procurement Regulations) dated July 2016 and revised in November 2017 and August 2018 under the “New Procurement Framework” (NPF), and the “Guidelines on Preventing and Combating Fraud and Corruption in Projects Financed by IBRD Loans and IDA Credits and Grants”, dated July 1, 2016 and other provisions stipulated in the Financing Agreement.
84. All goods, works and non-consulting services will be procured in accordance with the requirements set forth or referred to in the Section VI-Approved Methods: Goods, Works and Non-Consulting Services of the Procurement Regulations. The Consulting Services will be procured in accordance with the requirements set forth or referred to in the Section VII-Approved Selection Methods: Consulting Services of the Procurement Regulations, the Project Procurement Strategy for Development (PPSD), and Procurement Plan, approved by the World Bank. The Procurement Plan, including its updates, shall include for each contract: (i) a brief description of the activities/contracts; (ii) selection methods to be applied; (iii) cost estimates; (iv) time schedules; (v) the World Bank’s review requirements; and (vi) any other relevant procurement information. The Procurement Plan covering the first 18 months of the project implementation has been prepared and approved before negotiations date. Any updates of the Procurement Plan will be submitted for the World Bank’s approval. The MEN-A shall use the World Bank’s online procurement planning and tracking tools (STEP) to prepare, clear and update its Procurement Plans and conduct all procurement transactions.
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85. Systematic Tracking of Exchanges in Procurement (STEP). The project will use STEP, a planning and tracking system, which will provide data on procurement activities, establish benchmarks, monitor delays, and measure procurement performance. The first 18-months Procurement Pan (PP) has been reviewed and cleared by the World Bank through STEP. This PP shall be updated at least annually. All procurement to be carried out under the project shall be included in the PP which will be subject to prior review and clearance by the World Bank.
86. Procurement capacity and risk assessment. The MEN-A is the Government’s responsible entity for implementing the project, with the administrative and fiduciary support of an existing PCU of the Education Sector Program which is currently coordinating the multi donor-financed FoCEB project (P148127). The Procurement capacity and risk assessment of the PCU designated to manage the project was carried out by the World Bank in February 2019. The PCU will be responsible for the coordination, monitoring and evaluation of the project, under the authority of the Ministry of MEN-A during the overall project implementation phase. The PCU will also be responsible for providing administrative and fiduciary support to the technical departments. The PCU is led by a coordinator, with the support of one assistant coordinator, and is currently staffed with two M&E specialists, a financial management specialist, and a procurement specialist. The PCU will bear overall responsibility for procurement activities. It recognizes that the PCU has implemented the FoCEB and is familiar with World Bank procurement procedures.
.C. Legal Operational Policies . Triggered? Projects on International Waterways OP 7.50 No Projects in Disputed Areas OP 7.60 No .
. D. Environmental and Social . 87. The environmental and social risk classification for the project is Moderate. Construction is limited to small civil works including classrooms added to existing schools, latrines and water points. Some maintenance work such as repairs to walls, stairs/ramps and roofs will also be financed. The key environmental and social impacts and risks identified at this stage are the following: (i) nuisances related to air and noise emissions; (ii) impacts on water quality; (iii) disposal and management of waste during the construction phase; (iv) traffic management during the construction phase; (v) occupational health and safety of workers; (vi) community health and safety; and (vii) minimal labor influx. Given the expanded scope of the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) and the Client’s unfamiliarity with the ESF, the Borrower’s institutional capacity to implement the project under the ESF is limited. A thorough Institutional Capacity Assessment in compliance with the World Bank guidance was conducted during preparation and recommendations provided to the PIU. These recommendations are also reflected in the Environmental and Social Commitment Plan (ESCP)30. In order to ensure that there is adequate monitoring of E&S compliance, the PCU will hire a full time environmental specialist and a social specialist for the duration of the project. This team will be provided with the resources necessary to carry out their work including transportation and information technology. At appraisal, the following ESS are considered relevant:
30 Disclosed in-country on June 12, 2019 and on Infoshop on June 14. 2019.
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88. ESS1 Assessment and Management of Environmental and Social Risks and Impacts. An Environmental and Social Management Framework (ESMF) was prepared31 to provide guidance for screening of potential risks and managing unavoidable environmental and social impacts. Once project sites are identified, site specific ESMP(s) will be prepared that will include clearly defined mitigation measures for construction and operational phases, roles and responsibilities, time plans, costs and implementation arrangements for each mitigation measures recommended. The ESMP will incorporate a Labor Management Plan and an Occupational Health and Safety Plan.
89. ESS2 Labor and Working Conditions. The project footprint is relatively discrete and will not require a significant amount of outside labor. Labor camps are not anticipated. The project Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) will determine whether a Labor Management Plan is required (in the case of significant impacts) and whether (in a low risk scenario) the ESMP(s) will include labor related clauses and preventive health measures. All civil works contracts will include industry standard Codes of Conduct that include measures to prevent GBV/SEA.
90. ESS3 Resource Efficiency and Pollution Prevention and Management. The environmental impact of the construction activities is considered minimal, site-specific and temporary. The required building material will potentially include stones, sand, concrete blocks and timber and will be obtained from local licensed quarries and certified timber suppliers when possible. During the construction phase, air emissions will include exhaust from heavy vehicles and machinery and dust generated by construction activities. Those most likely to be affected are people living within the near proximity of the construction sites. The implementation of mitigation measures such as dust suppression and vehicle maintenance will be used to minimize the impact of air emissions during construction and residual impacts are expected to be limited in scope and duration. The ESMP that will be prepared for each site will include mitigation measures to minimize and manage the noise levels such by applying standard restrictions to hours of site work. Construction activities will generate solid waste which will primarily include excavated soil and debris and hazardous waste such as hydrocarbon oils from construction machinery and vehicles. The waste generated by the construction works will largely be disposed of at approved sites according with the national laws and regulations.
91. ESS4 Community Health and Safety. The Borrower will evaluate the risks and impacts of the project on the health and safety of the affected communities during the project life cycle. The ESIA for each site will provide a more complete analysis of these issues including the current security situation and potential GBV risks for teachers and students and mitigation measures reflected in the ESMP.
92. ESS5 Land Acquisition, Restrictions on Land Use and Involuntary Resettlement. The project does not involve land acquisition leading to physical or economic displacement. The project will finance the construction of classrooms, water points and latrines for existing schools. These will be built on land already managed by MEN- A or the municipality and it is expected that any negative impacts on usufructuary rights and private third party owners will be minimal and temporary in nature. During implementation, potential sites will be screened by MEN-A's E&S specialists to ensure that negative impacts are minimized or avoided. Screening criteria has been included in the ESMF and will be properly documented.
31 Disclosed in-country on June 12, 2019 and on Infoshop on June 14. 2019.
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93. ESS6 Biodiversity Conservation and Sustainable Management of Living Natural Resources. The potential environmental risks and impacts associated with this ESS are limited. The ESMF provides guidance on screening and mitigation measures to ensure that project activities do not alter or cause destruction of any critical or sensitive natural habitats including wetlands. Risks will be managed by using known mitigation measures that will be included in the site ESMPs.
94. ESS7 Indigenous Peoples/Sub-Saharan African Historically Underserved Traditional Local Communities. This ESS is not considered relevant as there are no Indigenous Peoples/Sub-Saharan African Historically Underserved Traditional Local Communities living in the project area.
95. ESS8 Cultural Heritage. As the project will finance some small civil works, the ESMF includes a Chance Finds Procedure and all specific construction contracts will include a “Chance Find” clause which will require contractors to stop construction in the event that cultural property sites are encountered during construction. This will also be monitored as part of the GRM and the Stakeholder Engagement Plan (SEP).
96. ESS9 Financial Intermediaries. This ESS is not currently considered relevant.
97. ESS10 Stakeholder Engagement and Information Disclosure. A draft SEP32 has been prepared that identified the key stakeholders and the approaches that will be used to consult with them and ensure their participation. It contains a summary of the consultations held during preparation and a comprehensive list of the direct and indirect stakeholders. It is cross referenced in the ESMF and the ESCP.
98. Climate co-benefits. Climate and disaster risks have been identified as not having a significant impact on the outcome of this project. This project reduces the communities’ overall exposure and vulnerability to climate and disaster risks and natural hazards as follows: activities planned under Component 1 (which include the development and implementation of a school construction and maintenance policy, norms and standards) would review current school blueprints in order to ensure that newly constructed schools reflect environmental principles in line with climate change considerations. All new schools/classrooms must be designed to be energy efficient, use renewable energy, provide clean water and sanitation in an efficient manner. Under Component 2, pedagogical tools such as tablets, would include contents that would sensitize teachers and children on climate change. Under subcomponent 3.1. “Strengthening decentralized management”, the piloting of a formula-based budget transfer to schools would support school maintenance and ensure that schools remain structurally sound, and in line with revised norms and standards. As mentioned in the section above, an ESF and ESCP have been prepared and disclosed by the Government to guide the screening of schools to be rehabilitated or extended. Each of the proposed project investments will be screened for its potential social and environmental impacts and relevant safeguards instruments will be prepared.
99. Citizen Engagement. Under the project, in addition to promoting stakeholder participation across the components, a selected set of citizen engagement activities will be supported to improve the quality of education services through better participation, transparency and accountability. These activities include: (a) facilitating dialogues and coordination between the MEN-A deconcentrated focal points and the local decentralized governments to better incorporate education related matters in the local planning processes; (b)
32 32 Disclosed in-country on June 12, 2019 and on Infoshop on June 14. 2019.
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citizens participation in monitoring education services potentially using mobile technology, which is already being tried by the MEN-A on a small scale; (c) visualization and disclosure of education/school data through a MEN-A website, and; (d) raising awareness of the beneficiaries and key stakeholders about existing Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM), including the local-level complaints handling committees.
V. GRIEVANCE REDRESS SERVICES
100. Communities and individuals who believe that they are adversely affected by a World Bank (WB) supported project may submit complaints to existing project-level grievance redress mechanisms or the WB’s Grievance Redress Service (GRS). The GRS ensures that complaints received are promptly reviewed in order to address project-related concerns. Project affected communities and individuals may submit their complaint to the WB’s independent Inspection Panel which determines whether harm occurred, or could occur, as a result of WB non-compliance with its policies and procedures. Complaints may be submitted at any time after concerns have been brought directly to the World Bank's attention, and World Bank Management has been given an opportunity to respond. For information on how to submit complaints to the World Bank’s corporate Grievance Redress Service (GRS), please visit http://www.worldbank.org/en/projects- operations/products-and-services/grievance-redress-service. For information on how to submit complaints to the World Bank Inspection Panel, please visit www.inspectionpanel.org.
VI. KEY RISKS
101. The overall risk rating is substantial based on risk ratings for: (i) macroeconomic risks; (ii) sector strategies and policies; (iii) technical design of the project - which introduces a results-based financing mechanism for the first time in Guinea; (iv) institutional capacity for implementation and sustainability; and (v) fiduciary. Political and governance risk is assessed as high. The other ratings are assessed as moderate, due in part to previous experience implementing World Bank projects, engagement with stakeholders, and moderate environmental and social safeguards risks. The most relevant risks are discussed below:
102. Political and Governance. Political and governance risk is assessed as high. Taking into account the elections in 2018-2020 (both parliamentary in December 2018 and the Presidential a year later) and Guinea’s history of difficult political transitions, a potentially turbulent transition period is possible. Despite these risks, the project benefits from the use of a well-established PCU and will leverage the next six months to ensure adequate groundwork has been completed, particularly as it relates to establishing the parameters for the results-based financing mechanism, to mitigate any risks related to government transitions.
103. Macroeconomic. Macroeconomic risks are considered substantial. Guinea’s economic recovery is highly dependent on the global economy, ongoing institutional and financial constraints, policy slippages and the political environment. Delays in structural reforms could also weaken medium-term growth prospects and constrain public investment spending during project implementation, although Guinea benefits from a recent track record of successful stabilization and structural reforms. The International Monetary Fund program and World Bank results-based operations will continue to coordinate their approaches and help mitigate these risks.
104. Sector strategies and policies. Risks related to sector strategy and policy is rated as substantial. As described earlier, the PNDES has a particular focus on human development, which will go hand in hand with the next 2019-
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2028 Education Sector Plan (PRODEG). The plan will be well-informed by the comprehensive RESEN which has been prepared but it bears mentioning that the PRODEG itself is still under preparation. Historically, given fragmentation in the sector and limited resources, there have been disconnects between funding decisions and policy goals/implementation, thus it will be critical for the PRODEG to lay out feasible policy objectives with necessary financing. The GoG approach to engage extensively with stakeholders and donor partners throughout the process (from RESEN to finalization of the PRODEG) will contribute towards this outcome, and to further mitigate risks related to sector strategy, the World Bank financing has been carefully developed in parallel to support the Government’s vision with sufficient flexibility to adjust specific results based on emerging PRODEG priorities.
105. Technical design of project. The design of the project is rated substantial. This is largely because the project introduces a results-based financing mechanism, the first of its kind in the sector and in Guinea, which will require initial capacity building in the short-term, but is expected to result in system strengthening in the medium term. Furthermore, it crosses multiple levels of education, from early childhood through lower secondary, and thus, requires extensive engagement with stakeholders and communities.
106. Institutional capacity for implementation and sustainability is rated substantial. Despite the complexity of introducing the results-based financing mechanism, the project benefits from an experienced PCU, and, through Component 4 will build in capacity building measures, including knowledge exchange with other African countries who have successfully implemented IPFs with DLIs. Further, early initiatives aimed at decentralizing the sector through the FoCEB project which required engagement at school, district and regional levels form a basis for strategic engagement with communities and other key stakeholders to successfully implement. Although sustainability risks always remain a concern, given that the DLIs are aimed at system strengthening, including for example putting into place minimum standards for early childhood education, creating a cohesive framework for in-service teacher and school director training, the project is expected to lay the groundwork for sustainable improvement to education outcomes in the medium term.
107. Fiduciary. Based on the World Bank’s assessment, the residual FM risk for the project is deemed substantial. The proposed FM arrangements are considered satisfactory in fulfillment of the World Bank’s minimum requirements following the implementation of mitigation measures. The implementing entity will ensure that the World Bank’s Guidelines: Preventing and Combating Fraud and Corruption in Projects financed by IBRD Loans and IDA Credits and Grants are followed under the project.
Risk and Resilience Assessment (RRA)
108. The Risk and Resilience Assessment (RRA) conducted by the World Bank in May 2017 found that Guinea faces a complicated set of interrelated drivers with respect to fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV) 33. Among the six drivers of fragility that were identified in the RRA, two are, to a certain extent, relevant to the education sector, such as: (i) weakness in the delivery of services where poor delivery of services would contribute to the population’s lack of support for state institutions; and (ii) youth exclusion and underemployment. The project design includes a few concrete tools that could help mitigate these risks as follows:
(a) Weakness in the delivery of services. The proposed project focuses on improving the delivery of quality education through a set of interventions that will support the improvement of teaching pedagogical
33 See Implementation Note for the IDA 18 Risk Mitigation Regime (RMR) in Guinea and Annex 6 of the CPF for more details.
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practices in the classroom through, inter alia, the improvement of in-service programs, and the development and implementation of a continuous professional development system. The project will also experiment in the use of technologies, such as tablets and smartphones, as pedagogical support to teachers, but also school directors and inspectors. The use of tablets and smart phones builds upon previous successful experiences that have been conducted, for instance, under FCB to improve school accountability by facilitating the collection of information on schools (such as teacher absenteeism) by prefectures and communities.
(b) An important feature of the project will be to support the decentralized management of human resources and schools through the introduction of decentralized recruitment and formula-based non- salary school budgets. The project will support the GoG in transferring the responsibility for teacher recruitment from the central to the prefectural and regional levels, thus achieving a better, needs-based distribution of personnel throughout the country. The project will also pilot the use of technology, such as mobile money, to facilitate the transfer of recurrent non-salary budget to schools. A more efficient transfer of funds to schools would ensure the basic maintenance of physical facilities and the purchase of consumables and small pedagogical materials.
The planned activities described above are expected to improve delivery of education services and school accountability, thus improving beneficiaries’ and civil society’s perception of the Government to citizen services.
(c) Youth exclusion and underemployment. The GoG recognizes that the largest gains in education can be made by investing in ECE. Evidence shows that the pathway to a strong future workforce begins with ensuring that students have a stable and safe learning environment, are ready to learn, and are interacting with qualified teachers. The proposed project will focus on the expansion of ECE public provision for girls and boys. The project will also support the development and implementation of an ECE policy framework which includes quality assurance standards, as well as in-service training program to improve teaching practices and school support system in pre- and primary schools. In addition, under the ECE component 1 of the project, a set of gender-focused activities will be piloted around the school feeding program (cantines scolaires) to mobilize the participation of mothers in school enrolment for boys and girls. These activities will be designed to build the capacities of a team of local mothers about maternal and child health and nutrition, child development, the importance and play-based nature of pre-school education, and, particularly for girls, timely enrollment in pre-schooling and completion of basic education.
.
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VII. RESULTS FRAMEWORK AND MONITORING
COUNTRY: Guinea Guinea Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education
Project Development Objectives(s) The Project Development Objectives (PDO) are to improve access to, and the quality of early childhood and basic education in the Project Areas and to strengthen the capacity of the education system to deliver better results.
Project Development Objective Indicators RESULT_FRAME_TBL_PDO Indicator Name DLI Baseline Intermediate Targets End Target 1 2 3 Improving equitable access to pre-school education
Number of children attending public ECE (of which 915.00 0.00 3,000.00 15,000.00 30,000.00 percentage of female) (Number) (value is not cumulative)
(of which % girls) (Percentage) 49.80 0.00 49.80 49.80 49.80
Improving pre-school and basic education quality using technological innovation
Early learning quality and outcomes as measured through the Monitoring Early Learning Quality and Outcomes TBD in Year 3 TBD (Improvement over baseline) (MELQO) (Text)
Teachers recruited or trained (CRI, Number) (cumulative) 0.00 0.00 250.00 10,500.00 26,000.00
Number of teachers recruited (CRI, Number) 0.00 0.00 0.00 100.00 1000.00
Teachers recruited or trained - Female (RMS 0.00 9,075.00 requirement) (CRI, Number)
Number of teachers trained (CRI, Number) 0.00 0.00 100.00 10,500.00 26,000.00
Students benefiting from direct interventions to enhance 0.00 0.00 3,000.00 575,000.00 1,430,000.00 learning (CRI, Number)
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RESULT_FRAME_TBL_PDO Indicator Name DLI Baseline Intermediate Targets End Target 1 2 3 Students benefiting from direct interventions to 0.00 -- -- 700,000.00 enhance learning - Female (CRI, Number)
Strengthening education sector management capacity
Percentage of stakeholders who use net-accessible dashboards for decision-making, advocacy or 0.00 20.00 informational purposes, as measured by an end-line sample survey of decision-makers (Percentage)
Intermediate Results Indicators by Components RESULT_FRAME_TBL_IO Indicator Name DLI Baseline Intermediate Targets End Target 1 2 3 Improving equitable access to pre-school education Status of standards-based, one-year ECE policy DLI 1 Not developed Approved and plan (Text) Number of pre-primary classrooms rehabilitated or constructed and supplied with 0.00 0.00 100.00 500.00 1,000.00 furniture, equipment and play-teaching- learning materials (Number) Improving pre-school and basic education quality using technological innovation Early grade reading ability (words per minute) (Number) 5.00 20.00 Status of standards-based policy on teacher DLI 2 Not developed Approved professional development (Text) ECE teachers: 0 - ECE teachers: 0 - Primary ECE teachers: 0 - Primary ECE teachers: 500 - Primary Number of teachers using mobile technologies ECE teachers: 1,000 - Primary Primary teachers: teachers: 0 teachers: 100 teachers: 10,000 in the classroom (Text) teachers: 25,000 0 Strengthening education management capacity Number of prefectures that recruit new DLI 3 0.00 0.00 16.00 33.00
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RESULT_FRAME_TBL_IO Indicator Name DLI Baseline Intermediate Targets End Target 1 2 3 teachers at decentralized level (Number) Number of public primary schools to which a formula-based non-salary recurrent budget is DLI 4 0.00 0.00 100.00 100.00 3,000.00 transferred (Number) Percentage of schools for which current year education indicators are net-accessible to DLI 5 0.00 0.00 0.00 10.00 90.00 decision-makers (Percentage) Reported grievances addressed within stipulated time frame (Percentage) 0.00 60.00
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Monitoring & Evaluation Plan: PDO Indicators Responsibility for Data Indicator Name Definition/Description Frequency Datasource Methodology for Data Collection Collection Number of children on the Annual school Bureau de Stratégie et Number of children attending public ECE (of which Annual School-level questionnaire filled out by enrolment list in September of the census Développement (BSD) percentage of female) (cumulative) school director and DSEE staff academic year Percentage of girls on the Annual school Annual School-level questionnaire filled out by BSD (of which % girls) enrolment list in September of the census school director and DSEE staff academic year (at least 49%) A compound measure of the quality of the ECE environment; Independent verification agency. The and of the child’s readiness for ‘Monitoring Early Learning Quality and primary school. The latter is a Outcomes (MELQO)’ tool (or similar) will Early learning quality and outcomes as measured score derived from the child’s Twice (Years 3 be used, and administered to a Survey Technical assistance (firm) through the Monitoring Early Learning Quality and performance on a pre-school and 4) representative sample of classrooms
Outcomes (MELQO) readiness measurement tool that rehabilitated/ constructed by the assesses pre-literacy, pre- Project; and of children who have numeracy and fine motor skills, as completed the pre-school year at those well as the child’s level of language classrooms. and socio-emotional development Compilation of numbers recorded in civil Annual Civil service service records of new hirings (Number DHR/MEN-A Teachers recruited or trained records of new teachers recruited, broken down by ECE and primary teachers) Compilation of numbers recorded in civil service records of new hirings. This indicator will measure the number of Civil service Annual new teachers recruited, broken down by DHR/MEN-A Number of teachers recruited records ECE and primary teachers as follows:
Year 2: ECE: 150; Primary: 100 Year 3: ECE: 500; Primary 10000 Year 4: ECE: 1000; Primary: 25000
Responsibility for Data Indicator Name Definition/Description Frequency Datasource Methodology for Data Collection Collection Teachers recruited or trained - Female (RMS Annual Civil service Compilation of numbers recorded in civil DRH/MEN-A
requirement) records service records of new hiring: Indicator
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will measure the number of new teachers recruited, broken down by ECE and primary teachers Civil service Annual Compilation of numbers recorded in civil DHR/MEN-A Number of teachers trained records service records of new hirings
Compilation of information from records and reports. The indicator will measure Project records the number of students in classrooms (for civil works that (a) at ECE level have been Years Students benefiting from direct interventions to and training) constructed and furnished, and have a PCU; DPE/DSE 2-4 enhance learning and school visit trained teacher; or (b) at primary level
reports. have a teacher who is using mobile technology to strengthen teaching- learning practices and deliver the curriculum. Compilation of information from records and reports. The number of students in Project records classrooms (non-cumulative values) that (for civil works Years (a) at ECE level have been constructed Students benefiting from direct interventions and training) PCU; DPE/DSE 2-5 and furnished, and have a trained to enhance learning - Female and school visit teacher; or (b) at primary level have a reports. teacher who is using mobile technology
to strengthen teaching-learning practices and deliver the curriculum. Number of stakeholders surveyed who can demonstrate an ability to identify key A test of ability to use the dashboard to information using dashboards and provide identify key indicators at different levels Percentage of stakeholders who use net-accessible examples of usage, as a percentage of Once of disaggregation, as well as an dashboards for decision-making, advocacy or stakeholders surveyed. Stakeholders to Survey Technical assistance (firm) (Year 4) interview about usage, to be informational purposes, as measured by an end- include central, regional, and DPE/DSE staff. administered to a sample of staff at line sample survey of decision-makers Stakeholders are defined as policy makers central, regional and DPE/DSE staff in MEN-A and other government
departments in Conakry and at the district and prefectural levels.
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Monitoring & Evaluation Plan: Intermediate Results Indicators
Indicator Name Definition/Description Frequency Datasource Methodology for Data CollectionResponsibility for Data Collection A binary (yes/no) indicator indicating whether or not a standards-based As per DLI protocol, viz. the policy and plan pertaining to one year Status of standards-based, one-year ECE policy and Once Government transmission of the approved PCU of ECE has been developed and plan policy and plan to the Bank approved. The policy and plan must
be acceptable to the Bank, as per the relevant DLI protocol The number of pre-primary Number of pre-primary classrooms rehabilitated or classrooms constructed – all supplied Compilation of acts of Annual Progress reports PCU/SNIES constructed and supplied with furniture, with furniture, equipment and play- handing over equipment and play-teaching-learning materials TLMs as defined by ECE policy – and officially handed over to Government Reading ability will be measured through the EGRA) protocol (sub‐test 8a) Measures the average number of Once Sample survey or through another Technical assistance (firm) Early grade reading ability (words per minute) words early grade students can read methodology (e.g. the per minute Program for the Analysis of Education Systems [PASEC]
A binary (yes/no) indicator indicating whether or not a standards-based As per DLI protocol, viz. the policy on teacher professional Status of standards-based policy on teacher Once Government transmission of the approved PCU development has been developed professional development policy and plan to the Bank and approved. The policy must be
acceptable to the Bank, as per the relevant DLI protocol Teachers will be visited by DPE/DSE staff after training The number of teachers who, School to check if the mobile subsequent to training, use a tablet Years 3 inspection and Number of teachers using mobile technologies in technology is being used to DPE/DSE or similar device to strengthen their and 4 pedagogical the classroom strengthen teaching-learning teaching-learning practices and support visits practices and deliver the deliver the curriculum curriculum
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The number of prefectures that apply the procedures pertaining to decentralized recruitment of new teachers. The procedures are those contained in the joint ministerial Twice Prefectural Third party verification at Number of prefectures that recruit new teachers at resolution (Years 3 education Technical assistance (firm) prefectural level decentralized level A/2019/1597/MFPRRMA/MENA/MB) and 4). departments
of May 3, 2019. The number to be verified independently by a technical assistance firm, using a methodology compliant with the relevant DLI protocol. Survey of primary schools A survey of using a methodology schools Number of public primary schools to which a Once (Year compliant with DLI protocol, The number of schools who received conducted by a Technical assistance (firm) formula-based non-salary recurrent budget is 4) and being able to determine a formula-based non-salary budget third party transferred the number of schools to verification firm which the budget is allocated
Audit of education database to verify number of schools The number of public schools (ECE with sufficient data to and primary) for which a net- BSD education Annual, generate a set of basic Percentage of schools for which current year accessible dashboard for decision- database and BSD (Year 3); technical assistance starting in education indicators. The education indicators are net-accessible to decision- makers at central and DPE/DSE levels reports (Year 4) Year 3 audit will be conducted in makers can generate education indicators for generators Year 4 by a third party in the current education year, as a compliance with the DLI percentage of the number of schools protocol
Measures the percentage of grievances related to the MEN-A that are reported by the call center and MEN-A call Reported grievances addressed within stipulated MEN-A call center database addressed by relevant Annual center report MEN-A and call center time frame stakeholders/services. The timeframe to address grievances will be defined in the MEN-A operating manual ME IO Table SPACE
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Disbursement Linked Indicators Matrix DLI_TBL_MATRIX DLI 1 Strengthened policy in ECE
Type of DLI Scalability Unit of Measure Total Allocated Amount (USD) As % of Total Financing Amount
Output No Text 500,000.00 4.00
Period Value Allocated Amount (USD) Formula
Baseline Outdated policy
Year 1 (2020) Approval of an ECE policy and implementation plan 500,000.00 The full amount (US$ 500,000) is disbursed when the ECE policy and implementation plan have been approved.
Year 2 (2021) 0.00 N.A. N Year 3 (2022) 0.00 N.A.
Year 4 (2023) 0.00 N.A.
DLI_TBL_MATRIX DLI 2 Strengthened in-service teacher professional development
Type of DLI Scalability Unit of Measure Total Allocated Amount (USD) As % of Total Financing Amount
Outcome Yes Text 4,500,000.00 36.00
Period Value Allocated Amount (USD) Formula
Baseline Outdated teacher professional development policy with no regular in-service training and pedagogical support
Year 1 (2020) Development and approval of a policy framework for in-service 500,000.00 The full amount (US$ 500,000) is disbursed training and support when the policy has been developed and approved.
Year 2 (2021) A pilot project to test the new approved policy is completed, with 500,000.00 The full amount (US$ 500,000) is disbursed at least 250 teachers trained, receiving at-school pedagogical
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support, and using new technologies for professional once the pilot project has been completed. development and curriculum delivery.
Year 3 (2022) At least 500 pre-primary and 10,000 primary teachers are trained 1,500,000.00 For every thousand teachers trained, US$ and receive at-school pedagogical support in line with the new 140,000 are disbursed up to 10,000 teachers policy, and use new technologies for professional development (corresponding to USD 1,400,000). If the full and curriculum delivery. training target is reached (i.e. 10,500 teachers), then the full amount (US$ 1,500,000) is disbursed provided the number of pre-primary teachers is at least equal either to the number of pre-primary classrooms that have been constructed and officially handed over or to 500. Numbers in excess of 10,500 are counted towards the target for Year 4.
Year 4 (2023) At least 500 pre-primary and 15,000 primary teachers are trained 2,000,000.00 For every thousand teachers trained, US$ and receive at-school pedagogical support in line with the new 125,000 are disbursed up to 15,000 teachers policy, and use new technologies for professional development (corresponding to USD 1,875,000). If the full and curriculum delivery. training target is reached (i.e. 15,500 teachers), then the full amount (US$ 2,000,000) is disbursed provided the number of pre-primary teachers is at least equal either to the new number of pre-primary classrooms that have been constructed and officially handed over (i.e. excluding those handed over in the previous year) or to 500.
DLI_TBL_MATRIX DLI 3 The recruitment of teachers is decentralized to the prefectural and regional levels
Type of DLI Scalability Unit of Measure Total Allocated Amount (USD) As % of Total Financing Amount
Outcome Yes Text 3,000,000.00 24.00
Period Value Allocated Amount (USD) Formula
Baseline 0 prefecture
Year 1 (2020) The approved joint ministerial resolution authorizing teacher 500,000.00 The full amount (US$ 500,000) is disbursed
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recruitment in collaboration with the MEN-A authorities at when the authorized joint minstieral regional and prefectural levels is disseminated to all regional and resolution is disseminated to all regional and prefectural education offices. prefectural education offices.
Year 2 (2021) A recurrent budget is allocated and transferred to the prefectoral 500,000.00 The full amount (US$ 500,000) is disbursed level enabling implementation of approved joint ministerial when a recurrent budget is allocated and resolution. transferred to all prefectures.
Year 3 (2022) Decentralized recruitment procedures are applied in at least 16 1,000,000.00 For each prefecture in which the procedures prefectures. are applied, US$ 62,500 are disbursed.
Year 4 (2023) Decentralized recruitment procedures are applied in all 33 1,000,000.00 For each prefecture (up to 33 prefectures) in prefectures. which the procedures are applied, US$ 30,000 are disbursed. If the procedures are applied in all 33 prefectures, the full amount (US$ 1,000,000) is disbursed.
DLI_TBL_MATRIX DLI 4 Non-salary, recurrent budgets are operationalized at school level
Type of DLI Scalability Unit of Measure Total Allocated Amount (USD) As % of Total Financing Amount
Outcome Yes Text 3,500,000.00 28.00
Period Value Allocated Amount (USD) Formula
Baseline A non-salary, formula-based recurrent budget (to school) is not in place
Year 1 (2020) A plan to operationalize a formula-based non-salary recurrent 500,000.00 The full amount (US$ 500,000) is disbursed school budget is developed and approved. when the plan has been developed and approved.
Year 2 (2021) A formula-based non-salary recurrent school budget is being 1,000,000.00 The full amount (US$ 1,000,000) is disbursed piloted. when the pilot has been initiated.
Year 3 (2022) The pilot is evaluated and a roll-out plan is approved. 500,000.00 The full amount (US$ 500,000) is disbursed when the pilot has been evaluated and the roll-out plan has been approved.
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Year 4 (2023) A formula-based non-salary recurrent school budget is allocated 1,500,000.00 For each 1,000 schools in which the formula- and transferred to at least 3,000 public primary schools. based non-salary recurrent school budget is allocated and transferred, US$ 500,000 are disbursed.
DLI_TBL_MATRIX DLI 5 Decision-makers and other stakeholders have access to timely education system information
Type of DLI Scalability Unit of Measure Total Allocated Amount (USD) As % of Total Financing Amount
Outcome No Text 1,000,000.00 8.00
Period Value Allocated Amount (USD) Formula
Baseline No integrated information system in place
Year 1 (2020) 0.00 N.A.
Year 2 (2021) School-level information for current school year is inputted by 500,000.00 The full amount (US$ 500,000) is disbursed March 31st using mobile technologies in at least 90% of pre- when it is verified that the target has been primary, primary and secondary education schools (public, achieved. community and private), and integrated into a national database.
Year 3 (2022) 0.00 N.A.
Year 4 (2023) Web-accessed dashboards are used by at least 20% of decision- 500,000.00 The full amount (US$ 500,000) is disbursed makers and other stakeholders, with key education indicators and when it is verified that the target has been query functions linked to national database with disaggregation to achieved. school level.
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Verification Protocol Table: Disbursement Linked Indicators
DLI 1 Strengthened policy in ECE
Description A pre-school policy and a strategic action plan for its implementation, both acceptable to the Bank, are elaborated and approved
Data source/ Agency Comité Inter-Ministeriel de Pilotage et de Coordination
Verification Entity World Bank Supervision Team The verification entity will verify the passing of legislation and/or decrees establishing the pre-school policy, as well as the approved action plan for reform roll-out, based on an official copy of the policy and plan that have been approved by the relevant authority. For the pre-school policy to be acceptable to the Bank, it will cover standards of ECE services in at least the following areas: staffing requirements including qualifications; continuous professional Procedure development; physical environment; play- and teaching-learning materials; identification of curriculum to be followed; and monitoring. The action plan will outline the steps and resources required to meet national ECE coverage targets with services that meet the standards stipulated in the policy.
DLI 2 Strengthened in-service teacher professional development A policy and action plan on in-service training and support, acceptable to the Bank, are elaborated and approved. The piloting of the policy will involve at least 250 teachers; its design will be acceptable to the Bank. Upon completion, MEN-A will produce a report providing lessons and recommendations. Numbers of teachers trained, supported and using new technologies, will be verified by a third party using a method acceptable to the Bank. Teachers may include persons whose primary function (‘fonction principale’) is as director, provided they continue to teach. The numbers trained refer to persons trained Description during that year, such that the total number of pre-primary and primary teachers should be 1,000 and 25,000, respectively. If the numbers trained in Year 3 exceed the target, the excess will be counted towards the target for Year 4. All teachers and directors trained will be from public primary schools; they may also come from community schools, provided the teacher is a civil servant whose salary is paid either fully or in part from the public budget. An evaluation among a representative sample of trained pre-primary and primary teachers is conducted by an independent evaluation agency using a methodology acceptable to the Bank. Policy and action plan: Comité Inter-Ministériel de Pilotage et de Coordination Reports on pilot and on teachers trained : MEN-A Verification reports: Data source/ Agency independent third party verification agency Evaluation report: independent evaluation agency World Bank Supervision Team will verify legislation/decrees on policy and action plan. A third party verification agency will conduct a verification of the Verification Entity trainings and in-class support. An independent evaluation agency will conduct an evaluation of teaching-learning practices among a representative sample of teachers trained. A copy of the policy approved by the relevant authority; the third party verification agency; and the evaluation report are all provided to the Bank. For the policy to be acceptable to the Bank, it must stipulate norms and modalities pertaining to the regular in-service training and at-school pedagogical Procedure support of pre-primary and primary teachers. The third party verification agency verifies that the teachers have been trained in accordance with the new policy; that they receive -school pedagogical
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support in line with the new policy; and that they use new technologies provided by the project for professional development and curriculum development. The third-party verification agency is conducted to verify the results for Years 3 and 4. Though not included as a DLR, an independent evaluation of play-teaching-learning practices is carried out in Year 4 on a representative sample of teachers who were trained in Year 3. The evaluation investigates inter alia to what extent teachers use the knowledge and skills imparted by the training, receive pedagogical support at school, and use new technologies provided by the Project for professional development and curriculum delivery. The final report of the independent evaluation is provided to the Bank, along with the minutes of the discussion held by MEN-A senior management. The methodologies of the third party verification agency and of the independent evaluation agency will be submitted to the Bank for review and approval prior to the start of any verification or evaluation. For the third party verification agency methodology to be acceptable to the Bank, it must be able to determine whether or not the Years 3 and 4 targets have been met.
DLI 3 The recruitment of teachers is decentralized to the prefectural and regional levels A joint ministerial resolution No. A/2019/1597/MFPRRMA/MENA/MB was adopted and published on May 3, 2019, authorizing teacher recruitment in Description collaboration with MEN-A authorities at regional and prefectural levels. This joint ministerial resolution authorizing and explaining decentralized (prefectural and regional) recruitment of teachers is disseminated to all regional and prefectural authorities of MEN-A, and is implemented in all prefectures. Joint ministerial resolution and correspondence: Comité Inter-Ministériel de Pilotage et de Coordination Prefectural budget: MDB (Loi des Finances) Third Data source/ Agency party verification report: third party verification agency World Bank Supervision Team will verify the published joint ministerial resolution, and the approval/allocation of a prefectural budget to implement joint Verification Entity ministerial resolution. The third party verification agency will verify records confirming that recruitment of teachers is done at the decentralized level. A copy of the Journal Officiel is provided to the Bank, along with copies of the official letter attached to the joint ministerial resolution and sent to all regional and prefectoral authorities of MEN-A. A copy of the approved budget (as indicated in the Loi des Finances) with the relevant prefectural budget line is provided to the Bank. Procedure The third party verification agency visits the relevant number of prefectures in Years 3 and 4, and reviews recruitment records to verify that recruitment is being done in accordance with the joint ministerial resolution. The third party verification agency's report is provided to the Bank. The methodology to be used by the third party verification agency will be submitted to the Bank for review and approval prior to the start of verification.
DLI 4 Non-salary, recurrent budgets are operationalized at school level A plan acceptable to the Bank to operationalize a formula-based non-salary recurrent budget at school level is developed and approved by the relevant Description authority, and is implemented. Plan: Comité Inter-Ministériel de Pilotage et de Coordination Implementation report on pilot initiation: MEN-A Evaluation of pilot: independent evaluation Data source/ Agency agency Report on budget allocations: third party verification agency World Bank Supervision Team will verify plan for roll-out, as well as report on implementation of the pilot. An independent evaluation agency will evaluate Verification Entity the pilot using a methodology acceptable to the Bank. A third party verification agency will verify the allocation of formula-based school budgets using a methodology acceptable to the Bank. A copy of the approved plan to operationalize a formula-based school budget is provided to the Bank. For the plan to be acceptable to the Bank, it must be Procedure approved by MDB and MEN-A and include the following elements: a description of the formula; a description of the roles and responsibilities of the main
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actors responsible for ensuring the transfer, management and supervision of the budget; a roll-out plan that includes a pilot phase and the steps to ensure that all primary schools will receive and be able to manage the budget, including the plan to ensure that the main actors have the capacities and resources required for them to fulfil their roles and responsibilities. A report on pilot implementation is prepared by MEN-A, and provided to the Bank. An independent evaluation using a methodology acceptable to the Bank is conducted of the pilot phase of the non-salary school budget, and its findings and recommendations are discussed by senior management at MEN-A. The final report of the independent evaluation is provided to the Bank, along with the minutes of the discussion held by MEN-A senior management. The evaluation methodology will be reviewed and approved by the Bank prior to data/information collection. MEN-A will approve a roll-out plan subsequent to the findings of the pilot or confirm that the original plan remains viable. The final report of the third party verification pertaining to formula-based school budgets (Year 4) being allocated/transferred to at least 3,000 schools is provided to the Bank. The third party verification agency methodology must be acceptable to the Bank; it must be reviewed and approved prior to data collection.
DLI 5 Decision-makers and other stakeholders have access to timely education system information Web-accessed dashboards are used by decision-makers and other stakeholders, with key education indicators and query functions linked to national Description database with disaggregation to school level. Data source/ Agency Quality reports from third party verification agency A third party verification using a methodology acceptable to the Bank is conducted in Years 2 and 4 to verify, respectively, the coverage of schools using Verification Entity mobile technology-based data input on a timely basis, and the use of web-accessed dashboards by stakeholders. The final reports of the third party verifications pertaining to timely, mobile-technology data inputs (Year 2) and to dashboards usage (Year 4) are provided to the Bank. The third party verification agency will use a methodology that has been submitted to the Bank for review and approval prior to verification. For the methodology to be acceptable to the Bank, it must: in Year 2, be able to determine whether or not at least 90 percent of public, community and private schools (pre-primary, primary and secondary) have had their annual school census data entered into the national database; and in Year 4, be able to determine whether or not at least 20 percent of decision-makers and other stakeholders have access to the dashboards through the Procedure internet/intranet and use them, and that the dashboards provide key education indicators, have query functions, and can provide information down to the school level. Prior to the approval of the methodology, the MEN-A and the Bank will agree on the profiles of decision-makers and stakeholders that the verification exercise will interview/test to determine the extent of their access and usage. The list will include staff at the central, regional, prefectural, sub- prefectural and school level.
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ANNEX 1: Implementation Arrangements and Support Plan
COUNTRY: Guinea Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education
Project Implementation
1. The project will be implemented over a four-year period. The MEN-A is the Government’s responsible entity for implementing the project, with the administrative and fiduciary support of the PCU. The MEN-A is ultimately accountable for meeting the project objectives, and providing oversight, monitoring and evaluation of project activities. The MEN-A is also responsible for providing the overall management of the project and guidance to the PCU as well as MEN-A central Directorates and their technical units which will be in charge of implementing project activities within their functional missions (including budget action plans, TORs, technical report, etc.). The roles of MEN-A entities involved in project implementation are described in Table 1.1. To ensure smooth implementation of components 2 and 3, it will be important for MEN-A to appoint one specialist in teacher professional development and training, and one specialist in education systems strengthening for the management and technical coordination of all the technical assistance activities planned under these two components.
Project Coordination
2. The PCU will be responsible for the coordination, and monitoring and evaluation of the project, under the authority of the Ministry of the MEN-A during the project implementation phase. The PCU will also be responsible for providing administrative and fiduciary support the Directorates and their technical units. The PCU will be led by a coordinator and will comprise, at a minimum, an assistant to the coordinator, a financial management specialist, a procurement specialist, an M&E specialist and an internal auditor, recruited on a competitive basis. In addition, the PCU will recruit one specialist in environment and one specialist in social safeguards to ensure the monitoring of all environmental and social safeguards activities with relevant entities at MEN-A, including the SNIES, which is responsible for implementing school construction and rehabilitation activities.
Project and Sector Strategic Oversight
3. The project will use the existing arrangements for strategic oversight, i.e.: two governing bodies will be responsible for the oversight of the project: (i) CIPC which will be responsible for ensuring overall implementation of the project and consultation with key stakeholders; and (ii) CSNE which will be responsible for approving and ensuring compliance of the annual budgeted plans with the project’s objectives and of the proposed activities with the selected strategies, regularly assessing the effectiveness of strategies and activities, and suggesting adjustment where necessary.
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Table 1.1. Role of Government Entities for Project Implementation by Component/Subcomponent
Component/ Responsible Role Comments Subcomponent Government Entity (Activity) Component 1: Improving equitable access to pre-school education ECE strategy and DNCECP (in coordination The DNCECP at MEN-A is responsible for the Continuous in-class implementation with DSEE and development, implementation, coordination of supervision and monitoring INRAP/ENI and service in the ECE strategy and implementation plans. of all program activities in charge of canteens) The DNCECP will coordinate teacher in-service 1,000 classrooms will have training with INRAP. to be confirmed. A decision will have to be taken on the The inspectors and DSEE will monitor the quality frequency of supervisions of ECE classrooms and teachers: availability of and if these professionals kits and equipment, availability of tablets, in- will be part of MEN-A or an class pedagogical support, monitor if teachers external entity. are diffusing ECE messages. The DNPCEC will coordinate with INRAP for the implementation of teacher training workshops and in-service trainings. ECE expansion of DNCECP and SNIES SNIES is responsible for implementing school For the supervision of civil infrastructure construction and rehabilitation activities. works, MEN-A needs to decide whether the recruitment of supervision firms will be done through the PCU, or if this supervision will be done through private engineering firms (which could be the same firms in charge of designing works). Screening by the E&S specialists in the PIU will be necessary to avoid negative environment and social impacts during construction. Component 2: Improving pre-school and basic education quality using technological innovation Teacher professional INRAP (in coordination The INRAP at MEN-A is responsible for in- It will be important for MEN- development with SNFPP and IGE and service training. Under the project, INRAP will A to appoint a specialist with DNEF) be in charge of teacher in-service training the relevant expertise and activities with the support of SNFPP, while IGE experience in teacher will be in charge of inspection and teachers professional development coaching. and training to manage all the technical assistance under this component.
Component 3: Strengthening education sector management capacity Sub-component 3.1.: Strengthening decentralized management Management and DHR (in coordination The DRH at MEN-A, in coordination with IRE, will recruitment of teachers with IRE) be in charge of decentralizing the recruitment of teachers at prefectural and regional levels based on the needs and with priority given to local training institutes.
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Component/ Responsible Role Comments Subcomponent Government Entity (Activity) DPE/DCE and IRE will be responsible to implement the Joint ministerial resolution. Recurrent non-salary budget DNEF (in coordination The DNEF at MEN-A will be in charge of transfer to schools with DAF) implementing the recurrent non-salary budget, based on specific formula, mechanism. The DNEF will coordinate with DAF on budget transfer procedures. Sub-component 3.2.: Strengthening systems for planning, M&E Improvement of information BSD (in coordination The BSD at MEN-A will be in charge of It will be important for MEN- systems and planning and with SNCES, INRAP, and developing an integrated data base for MEN-A. A to appoint one specialist M&E DRH) Using mobile technologies, the BSD will be in with the relevant expertise charge of collecting and sharing reliable data for and experience in education all the systems. systems strengthening to manage all the technical The BSD will be in charge of developing the assistance under this sub- scholar card based on reliable data. component. The DRH will be in charge with close support of BSD of piloting a unique code for staff to ensure efficient monitoring of staff deployment. The SNCESE will be in charge of assessing learning under the project - at least on EGRA cycle - as well as the annual cycle of learning assessment for the CP2, CE2 and CM2 levels. Component 4: Project Management and Monitoring and Evaluation Supervision/Coordination MEN-A, PCU The project is anchored at the MEN-A. Under the authority of MEN-A, the PCU will be in charge of coordinating the implementation of project activities and will work closely with MEN-A implementing structures.
Procurement Arrangements
4. The MEN-A will carry out procurement for the proposed project in accordance with the World Bank’s “Procurement Regulations for IPF Borrowers” (Procurement Regulations) dated July 2016 and revised in November 2017 and August 2018 under the (NPF, and the “Guidelines on Preventing and Combating Fraud and Corruption in Projects Financed by IBRD Loans and IDA Credits and Grants”, dated July 1, 2016 and other provisions stipulated in the Financing Agreement.
5. The MEN-A, with the World Bank’s support, has prepared a PPSD which describes how procurement activities will support project operations for the achievement of the PDO and deliver Value for Money (VfM). The procurement strategy is linked to the project implementation strategy ensuring proper sequencing of the activities. It considers institutional arrangements for procurement, roles and responsibilities, thresholds, procurement methods, and prior review, and the requirements for carrying out procurement. It also includes a detailed assessment and description of MEN-A, as the implementing agency, for carrying out procurement and managing contract implementation, within an acceptable governance structure and accountability framework. Other issues to be
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considered in the strategy include the behaviors, trends and capabilities of the market (i.e. Market Analysis) to respond to the procurement plan.
6. Operating Costs. Operational costs financed by the project would be incremental expenses, including office supplies, vehicles operation and maintenance cost, maintenance of equipment, communication costs, rental expenses, utilities expenses, consumables, transport and accommodation, per diem, supervision costs, and salaries of locally contracted support staff. Such service needs will be procured using the procurement procedures specified in the PIM accepted and approved by the World Bank.
7. Staffing. The existing procurement specialist for the FoCEB PIU will be maintained for this project or a procurement specialist with qualifications and experience satisfactory for the World Bank will be recruited on a competitive basis, using World Bank’s procurement procedures.
8. Systematic Tracking of Exchanges in Procurement (STEP). The project will use STEP, a planning and tracking system, which will provide data on procurement activities, establish benchmarks, monitor delays, and measure procurement performance. The first 18-months procurement Pan (PP) has been reviewed and cleared by the World Bank through STEP. This PP shall be updated at least annually. All procurement to be carried out under the project shall be included in the PP and prior cleared by the World Bank.
9. Record Keeping. All records pertaining to award of tenders, including bid notification, bid opening minutes, bid evaluation reports and all correspondence pertaining to bid evaluation, communication sent to/with the World Bank in the process, bid securities, and approval of invitation/evaluation of bids will be retained by the PCU and uploaded in STEP.
10. Disclosure of procurement information. The following documents shall be disclosed: Procurement Plan and updates; invitation for bids for goods and works for all contracts; Request for Expression of Interest for selection/hiring of consulting services; and contracts awards for goods, works and non-consulting and consulting services.
11. Complaints Handling. For the procurement-related complaints, the project will follow the procedure prescribed in the Procurement Regulations for IPF Borrowers “Procurement in Investment Project Financing - Goods, Works, Non-Consulting and Consulting Services” [Para-3.26 and 3.31] (July 2016 version, Revised November 2017 and August 2018)34. In order to deal with the complaints from bidders, contractors, suppliers, consultants and general public at large, a complaint handling mechanism will be set up and detailed procedures will be prescribed in the PIM.
12. Fiduciary oversight and Procurement Review by the World Bank. The World Bank shall carry out prior reviews for contracts according to prior review thresholds set out in the Procurement Plan. All contracts not covered under prior review by the World Bank shall be subject to post review during implementation support missions and /or special post review missions, including missions by consultants hired by the World Bank.
34 These guidelines can be found on the World Bank website at: http://www.worldbank.org/en/projects-operations/products-and- services/procurement-projects-programs.
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13. Contract management capability. As the implementing agency, the MEN-A, with support from the PCU, remains responsible overall for compliance with the agreed procurement procedures and processes and shall monitor the contractual performance including contract management issues, if any.
Procurement Risk Assessment
14. Based on the World Bank’s assessment, the overall procurement risk is rated substantial. The assessment at appraisal stage shows that the main risk is that the PCU has to interact with various partners inside and outside the MEN-A:
a. At the MEN-A level: (a) the directorates and technical units which will be in charge of implementing project activities within their functional missions will work closely with the PCU (including TORs, technical report, etc.); (b) there is one Procurement Officer (Personne Responsable des Marchés Publics-PRMP) who is responsible for the Ministry of National Education’s public procurement activities; and (c) a tender committee which will be involved in the project procurement process; often, the tender committee members have limited procurement skills, and insufficient experience in World Bank procurement procedures.
b. Outside the MEN-A: there is one other actor who will be involved in the public procurement process by overseeing the national procurement process (Direction Nationale du Contrôle des Procédures de Passation des Marchés under the Ministry of Finance).
15. Some mitigation measures include: (i) maintaining, within the PCU, the current procurement specialist for this project or to recruit a procurement specialist with qualifications and experience satisfactory for the World Bank before effectiveness; (ii) developing a PIM including procurement procedures before effectiveness; and (iii) providing training and support on procurement to the tender members committee on World Bank procurement procedures and processes.
Financial Management (FM) Arrangements
16. As the implementing agency for the project, the MEN-A will have overall responsibility for project coordination and implementation with the administrative and fiduciary support of the PCU. The PCU will bear overall responsibility for FM tasks.
17. Planning and budgeting. The PCU will prepare a detailed Annual Work Plan and Budget (AWPB) for implementing the activities of the project. The AWPB will be submitted to the CSNE for approval and thereafter to IDA for no- objection, not later than November 30 of the year preceding the year the work plan should be implemented.
18. Internal control system and internal audit. The internal control system is designed to ensure: (i) the effectiveness and efficiency of operations; (ii) the reliability of financial reporting; and (iii) the compliance with applicable laws and regulations. For this project, the accounting, financial and administrative procedures manual, to be developed, will document, explain and describe work processes, information flow, authorization and delegation
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of authority, timing, segregations of duties, auto and sequential controls, compliance with project objectives, micro and macro rules and regulations. Application of the procedures set out in the manual will be mandatory for all staff at all levels. One internal auditor will be recruited for the PCU.
19. Accounting Arrangements. The current FM team should consist of a qualified and experienced FM Officer and a qualified and experienced accountant to manage the new project. The prevailing accounting policies and procedures in line with the West African Francophone countries accounting standards—SYSCOHADA—in use in Guinea for ongoing World Bank-financed operations will apply. The accounting systems and policies and financial procedures used by the project will be documented in the project’s administrative, accounting, and financial manual to be developed by the project. The PCU will customize the accounting software currently used by the FoCEB project to meet the new project requirements. This software should be capable of recording transactions and reporting project operations in a timely manner including preparation of withdrawal applications and periodic financial reports (Interim unaudited Financial Reports- IFR- and Annual Financial Statements). The software should include budgeting, operating and costs accounting systems to facilitate monitoring, evaluation and reporting.
20. Interim Financial Reporting. The unaudited IFRs will be prepared every quarter and submitted to the World Bank regularly (for example, 45 days after the end of each quarter) and on time. The quarterly IFR for the project includes the following financial reports: (i) Statement of Sources of Funds and Project Revenues and Uses of Funds; (ii) cash forecast; (iii) explanatory notes; and (iv) Designated Account (DA) activity statements.
21. Annual Financial Reporting. In compliance with the West African Francophone countries accounting standards and IDA requirements, the implementing entity will produce annual financial statements. These include: (i) a Balance Sheet that shows assets and liabilities; (ii) a Statement of Sources and Uses of Funds showing all the sources of project funds and expenditures analyzed by project component and/or category; (iii) a DA Activity Statement; and (iv) notes related to significant accounting policies and accounting standards adopted by management and underlying the preparation of financial statements. The financial statements will be audited annually by the external auditor.
22. External Auditing. The external audit of the project’s funds will be done by a private audit firm acceptable to the World Bank on the basis of TOR cleared by the World Bank. The audit will be carried out in accordance with the International Standards on Auditing. The audit report together with the management letter will be submitted to the World Bank within six months after the end of the financial year. The financial years for preparing audited accounts will follow the financial year of the implementing entity. Audit reports will be publicly disclosed by the World Bank in accordance with the World Bank disclosure policy.
Table 1.2: Due Dates of the Audit Report
Audit Report Due Date Responsible Party Audited financial statements including (a) Not later than June 30 (2000 + N) if effectiveness has PCU audit report and Management Letter occurred before June 30 (2000 + N-1). (for project and consolidated financial (b) Not later than June 30 (2,000 + N+1) if effectiveness statement) for each entity. has occurred after June 30, (2000 + N-1)
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23. Funds of Flow Arrangements. The implementing entity will open a designated account (DA) in a financial institution acceptable to IDA. – see table below for bank accounts and currencies. The ceiling of the DA will be stated in the Disbursement and Financial Information Letter (DFIL).
Table 1.3: Funds of Flow Arrangements
Implementing Entity Designated Account Financial DA Currency Project Account Currency Institution Guinea Central Bank (BCRG) US$ ______GNF (Commercial bank)
24. Disbursements for all implementing entities. Upon grant effectiveness, disbursements will follow the Disbursement Guidelines for Investment Project Financing operations issued in February 2017. The project will finance 100 percent of eligible expenditures inclusive of taxes. Disbursements for this project will be IFR-based with the possibility of direct payments (on exceptional basis), reimbursements and special commitments. An initial advance up to the ceiling of the DA will be made into the DA from which payments for incurred eligible project expenditures will be made. Where payment is to be made for eligible project expenditures in local currency, funds will be transferred from the DA to the project account to make such payments. The balance in the project account will be as close to zero as possible after payments have been made. The authorized signatory for each entity will sign and submit Withdrawal Applications electronically using the eDisbursement module accessible from the World Bank’s Client Connection website.
25. The following bank accounts will be opened for the purpose of this project:
• Designated Accounts (DAs): the implementing agency will open the Designated Accounts (DA) in US$ in a financial institution (central or commercial bank) acceptable to IDA. • National Treasury Account: the National Treasury Account held in the central bank will receive funds allocated to DLIs for immediate onward transfer to the project account. • Project accounts: The project will open a project account in Guinean Franc (GNF) for the payment of eligible project expenditures in local currency; funds will be transferred from the DA to the project account to make such payments. The balance in the project account will be as close to zero as possible after payments have been made.
26. Verification Process for Project Disbursement-Linked Indicators (DLIs). For the results-based portion of the project, MEN-A will contract one or more IVAs with sufficient technical and sectoral expertise to handle the verification procedures of Disbursement-Linked Results (DLRs). Verification protocols have been established for each DLR (details are provided in Section VII). The verification process will be managed by the PCU which will be entrusted to compile the project’s annual financial statements and provide any ad hoc financial reports to follow on the project’s financial activities. Within one (1) month of the achievement (or partial achievement) of the DLRs, MEN-A will notify the IVA to verify results. The IVA will conduct the verification of results and submit the verification report within three (3) months, using the DLI/DLRs Verification Protocol. The World Bank will review the documentation submitted along with the verification report and request any additional information considered necessary. Upon approval, the World Bank will send a formal notification to the Recipient.
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27. Local taxes. Funds will be disbursed in accordance with project categories of expenditures and components and their financing will be in line with the Financing Agreement and will be inclusive of taxes per the current country financing parameters approved for Guinea.
Figure 1.1: Fund Flows by implementing agency
IDA
Reimbursement DA (USD) Central Bank or Commercial bank
Component with DLI Component without DLI
Sub-Account GNF Treasury (central bank)
Contractors, Suppliers and Services providers
Flow of documents (invoices, expenditures justification, DLI report, etc.)
Flow of funds
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Updated FM risk assessment
Risk Risk Risk Mitigation Measure Risk Rating Rating after Mitigation Measures I. Inherent Risks:
Country level H Implement the PFM reform agenda with the support H of the World Bank and others donors. The World financed project (P125890, Public Sector Governance) is supporting the design of the PFM system Entity level S Develop clear project implementation manual and S capacity building plan will be implemented.
Project level S Describe the role and responsibility of each S stakeholder in the Project Implementation Manual (PIM) II. Control Risks: S S
Budgeting S Follow strictly the budget preparation policies and S procedures described in the operational manual. Track budget variances and take proactive decisions Accounting S Dedicate FM and accountant to project activities. S Install accounting software to record project transactions. Train staff on WB procedures. Internal Controls S Elaborate the PIM and clarify role of each actors. S Recruit internal auditors to oversee project transactions. Funds Flow S Open DA account at central bank and appoint M signatories in a timely manner.
Financial Reporting S Agree on the IFR format built on IFRS financial S information presentation characteristics External Auditing S Recruit an acceptable audit firm and ensure that ToR M is approved by IDA
Overall Risk H S
Results Monitoring and Evaluation Arrangements
28. The project Results Framework will be used as the basis for monitoring and evaluation of the project. The PDO and intermediate outcome indicators will be monitored through official Government data, surveys, and progress reports produced by the PCU.
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29. At the project level, the PCU will be responsible for preparing a semi-annual report on the technical, physical, and financial progress of the project, including indicators, and will work closely with the BSD at MEN-A, which is primarily responsible for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data at the central level. The existing capacity at the BSD is relatively good. The BSD is using the EMIS that can be accessed at central, regional and prefectural levels, and can generate numerous indicators down to the sub-prefectural level. The proposed project will support, through components 3 and 4, activities to enhance the EMIS, modernize the information systems at MEN-A through the integration of existing databases, and build the capacity of MEN-A staff in monitoring and evaluation and data analysis through its components 3 and 4.
30. Data collection. Data to monitor the project will be drawn from three main sources: (a) statistical data from Government annual publications; (b) surveys; and (c) progress reports from the PCU. The BSD has the overall responsibility of providing the data needed to analyze the progress of the project, including the statistical data and surveys, with the support of the decentralized structures (IREs, DPEs, DCEs, and DSEEs) and schools (see Figure 5). At the decentralized level, the proposed project will support the use of technologies such as tablets and smartphones for a more efficient, real-time, collection of data.
Figure 1.2: Data collection process and dissemination
Source: MEN-A
Project Implementation Manual (PIM)
31. A PIM for the project will be developed before project effectiveness. The PIM will describe the detailed responsibilities, implementation and coordination arrangements, detailed fiduciary and disbursement arrangements, financial management processes and procedures, action plans, implementation schedule, result indicators, Disbursement Linked-Indicators and monitoring and evaluation and verification protocols for each
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component/subcomponent described in the PIM, taking into account, both financing mechanisms used by the project (i.e. the Investment Project Financing (IPF) and Result-Based Financing (RBF)). The PIM will be updated as needed during project implementation.
Strategy and approach for implementation support
32. The implementation support plan for the project has been developed based on the specific nature of the project activities, lessons learned from past operations in the country and sector, and the project’s risk profile and implementation arrangements. The plan will be reviewed once a year to ensure that it continues to meet the implementation support needs of the project.
Implementation support
33. Before project effectiveness, it will be critical to ensure that project staff resources and technical capacity (especially at the PCU) are already in place to effectively start implementation. During implementation, the project will support, based on identified needs, the recruitment of additional experts to assist the PCU and MEN-A entities in the coordination and implementation of project activities. The project also includes a number of activities that will contribute to building the capacity of PCU and MEN-A entities as needed.
34. The task team, including the Task Team Leader and co-task Team Leader, the education specialist, safeguards specialists and procurement and Financial Management specialists, will play an active role during implementation to support the full implementation and participation of beneficiaries. In collaboration with the task team, other World Bank specialists / consultants are also expected to join the team to provide timely, effective, specific technical expertise to the client. In terms of local support, three task team members (one education specialist, one FM specialist and one Procurement specialist) are currently based in the World Bank office in Conakry with extensive experience in supporting implementation through the ongoing multi donor-financed Pooled-Fund for Basic Education (P148127), and the Stepping Up Skills Project (P146474) projects. A social safeguards specialist is based in Banjul, the Gambia and will frequently be in Conakry to support this project. Given the hybrid nature of the project (a mix of result-based with traditional IPF approach), the presence of these four specialists in the field will ensure regular and consistent technical and fiduciary support.
35. Semi-annual and annual reviews. The project will have semi-annual and annual implementation support reviews – or more if needed – which will take place in the country and involve key national stakeholders and development partners. These reviews will be to evaluate the progress made in project implementation, identify potential or actual bottlenecks and make recommendations for improvement. The reviews will also monitor project toward achievement of project indicators. All findings will be documented in aide-memoires and policy papers, as needed. A project launch mission will take place shortly after project effectiveness (expected the second semester of calendar year 2019) which will consist of confirming the Government and stakeholders’ roles and responsibilities in project coordination, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation, and agreeing on the annual work plan for the first year of the project. A comprehensive mid-term review will take place and is also included in the World Bank and MEN-A’s implementation support plan.
36. Fiduciary support to the implementation plan. Fiduciary supervision missions will be conducted over the project’s lifetime. The project will be supervised using a risk-based approach. Based on the outcome of the fiduciary risk assessment, the following implementation support plan is proposed. The objective of the implementation support plan is to ensure the project maintains satisfactory FM systems throughout its life.
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Table 1.4: Main Focus for Support to Implementation – Resources Requirements
Project Focus Skills needed Estimated Timeline Staff Week • Preparation of civil works, including review of design, plans, • Architect/Engineer costs 4 • School construction and maintenance strategy • Architect/Engineer • Development of ECE strategy • ECE specialist 4
• Information systems – Integration of MEN-A databases • IT specialist 3 • Procurement • Procurement specialist 2
• Financial Management / Internal audits • FM specialist 2
• External audits • FM specialist Year 1 • Development of teacher professional development / in-service • Teacher training and professional 3 training development specialist • Decentralization of management (formula-based budgets to • Education management specialist 2 school) – Pilot mobile cash transfers • IT specialist 2 • Social (including citizen engagement) and environmental • Social and environmental 8 safeguards safeguards specialists • School supervision • Architect/Engineer 16 • Implementation of ECE strategy • ECE specialist • Communications specialist • Information systems – Integration of MEN-A databases • IT specialist 10 • Procurement • Procurement specialist 16
• Financial Management / Internal audits • FM specialist 10
• External audits • FM specialist Years 16 2-5 • Implementation of teacher professional development / in- • Teacher training and professional service training development specialist • Decentralization of management (formula-based budgets to • Education management specialist 16 school) – Pilot mobile cash transfers • IT specialist • Social and environmental safeguards reviewing screening, • Social and environmental 10 documentation and mitigation measures, monitoring GBV risks safeguards specialists
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ANNEX 2: Detailed Project Description
COUNTRY: Guinea Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education
Background
1. Access to quality pre-school education in Guinea is constrained by policy and the lack of available public services. The DNPCEC has a 2007 policy on early childhood education, as well as a revised draft of ECE standards. However, implementation of the policy and standards is hindered by two factors. First, the policy and standards are based on a minimum model that includes a multi-year and comprehensive set of services. Given the country’s state of development, it will be difficult to achieve any significant increase in coverage over a reasonable time period using this model. The policy and standards need to be strengthened to allow for one year of early childhood education, which can be scaled up affordably by the public, community and private sector. Second, the DNPCEC does not have a plan to implement its national policy, and thus has no strategy, budget or series of prioritized steps to increase ECE coverage. As to the availability of public pre- school classrooms, there are none outside of Conakry (which has only two public pre-schools). The first component will address these constraints, through the development of policy and a strategic plan; and the construction, furnishing and equipping, and staffing of public pre-primary classrooms.
2. The poor performance at primary level is due in part to the quality of teaching-learning practices. These could be improved by providing teachers better access to opportunities for continuous professional development, including pedagogical support; as well as access to teaching-learning materials. Teachers rarely get an opportunity for in-service training, which are usually one-off and donor-driven. Further, School Directors and DPE/DSEE and IGEN staff all have limited capacities to provide supportive pedagogical supervision. The second component will address these constraints through the development of a standards-based and budgeted policy for continuous professional development, focused on creating local networks and at-school opportunities on a regular basis; the training of all pre-school teachers recruited for the classrooms under component one; the training of approximately 25,000 public primary teachers and School Directors under the new policy, tailored to locally identified needs; and the supply to all teachers, School Directors and pedagogical support staff of tablets loaded with materials to support both professional development and more effective teaching-learning and pedagogical support practices.
3. Poor performance at the primary level is also related to the uneven distribution of teachers, who are clustered disproportionately in larger urban areas, leaving other areas underserved; to the poor quality of the physical environment in many schools; and to the generalized lack of basic teaching-learning materials. Sub- component 3.1 will address these constraints through a policy to decentralize teacher recruitment and the operationalization of a non-salary recurrent school budget.
4. Education system information and planning need to be strengthened, to ensure the timely availability of information for decision-makers at all levels and to develop strategic responses to critical challenges including the availability of infrastructure and personnel. These will be addressed in sub-component 3.2 through the strengthening of information systems and planning capacities along priority thematic lines.
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5. The project has three transformative design features. First, it uses technology as a means to disrupt old practices that are inefficient and ineffective. Tablets will be provided to all teachers and school directors loaded with content for professional development, pedagogical supervision and support, and materials for effective teaching. This will help to transform the old models of professional development and supplying teaching-learning materials, whereby opportunities and materials to help a teacher improve practice are extremely limited, expensive to access, and inflexible. Technology will be explored as a means to facilitate the transfer of funds to schools and local support services, as one means to transform old patterns of budgeting that result in highly limited funds flow. Mobile technology will be introduced to speed up data collection for education information systems and increase its reliability.
6. Second, the project works to strengthen essential functions of the education system through policy reform and the associated establishment of sustainable financing mechanisms. The revised ECE policy (Component 1) will – alongside the Government’s commitment to hire pre-school teachers - pave the way for the public (and private) sectors to make pre-school services more widely available and accessible even to the poorest. The policy on CPD for teachers including its funding mechanisms (Component 2) will provide a standards- based foundation to enable teachers regularly to access local and school-level opportunities for professional development that better respond to teachers’ needs. The policy on decentralized teacher recruitment (sub- component 3.1) will lead to a distribution of teachers that corresponds to need. The operationalization of a non-salary recurrent budget (sub-component 3.1) will increase the return on infrastructural investments, improve the quality of the physical environment, and make available pedagogical inputs that make teaching- learning practices more effective.
7. Third, for the first time in the education sector in Guinea, the project will use Disbursement-Linked Indicators (DLIs) together with inputs financing. The results-based approach is based on evidence from the World Bank’s experience globally that outcomes can often be more effectively achieved with the results-based DLIs instrument.35 The DLIs approach will be used to achieve critical results pertaining to the sustainable implementation of reforms, enabling the expansion of one-year ECE (component 1), the regular provision of CPD opportunities for teachers (component 2), the decentralized recruitment of teachers (sub-component 3.1), the annual financing of school-level maintenance and teaching-learning materials (sub-component 3.1), and widespread access for decision-makers and stakeholders to timely, relevant information on the education system (sub-component 3.2).
Component 1: Improving equitable access to pre-school education (IDA US$30.2 million equivalent)
8. The objective of this component is to increase equitable access to pre-school through a policy- and standards- based expansion of pre-school services in areas of greatest need.
9. The MEN-A’s current pre-school policy and draft ECE standards will be revised and approved. The revisions will ensure that the minimum standards allow for one year of early childhood education. The policy and standards will include chapters on at least the following areas: the physical environment (e.g. class size, lighting, water and sanitation, food preparation); the pedagogical environment (e.g. layout, pedagogical-play
35 Experiences from results-based projects suggest that the use of DLIs can incentivize the government to undertake politically challenging system‐level education reforms (Holland and Lee 2017). DLIs can also provide implementation‐level actors with incentives and momentum to increase implementation speed and find solutions for results achievement. This approach encourages the dialogue with counterparts to focus on critical outputs and outcomes rather than on inputs.
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equipment and materials); the curriculum to be followed; personnel, including staffing requirements, necessary qualifications and provisions for continuous professional development; monitoring, supervision and quality assurance; and licensing and regulation. To facilitate implementation of the policy, the project will support the development of a strategic plan for implementation that prioritizes, phases and costs activities, and that clarifies how the GoG will meet its 2030 Ten-Year Education Program for Guinea PRODEG target for access to early childhood education.
10. The project will finance technical assistance to MEN-A to support the revision of the policy and standards, as well as the development of the strategic implementation plan. The revision and development process will incorporate consultations with stakeholders, which the project will also support.
11. To further increase access to early childhood education on an equitable basis, the project will support the construction of 1,000 pre-school classrooms for the public sector, and equip them with furniture and pedagogical-play equipment and materials. It is expected that this will provide new access to standards-based ECE (one-year program) for 30,000 children aged five years. The classrooms will be stand-alone structures on the premises of public primary schools. They will be constructed, furnished and equipped according to the standards approved in the revised ECE policy, mentioned above. That is, the number of classrooms to be built at each site will depend on the student:teacher ratio norm and the local number of children aged five years expected to enroll; the furniture and equipment will be according to children’s size norms; playground areas will be equipped as per norms; and so forth. Each classroom will also be supplied with an ECE kit, which will include essential pedagogical materials, toys, games, and other play-teaching-learning materials (including any stipulated by the ECE policy minimum standards); as well as up to two sets of consumable items included in the kit. The Government is committed to assigning a qualified teacher to each newly constructed classroom.
12. The project seeks to ensure a broad, regionally balanced distribution of sites, while ensuring they are targeted on the poorest communities. The sites will be located in rural and peri-urban areas, where poverty tends to be more prevalent and private sector services are generally unavailable; and in communities where there is sufficient potential demand. Within these parameters, the sites will be selected according to transparent criteria, including the number of students in Grades 1-2 (with larger sizes being ranked higher in priority) and the presence of a functional water point. If it is not possible to find sufficient schools with a functioning water point, then the project will finance its construction or rehabilitation, and support local capacity building for maintenance. Approximately 400 of the sites will be located at a school that has a functional cantine scolaire, both as a means of poverty-targeting and with a view to determine the importance of school feeding to attract ECE enrollment and to anchor gender-focused activities (see below). Finally, sites will be selected to enable some location clustering, to facilitate regular site supervision.
13. The project will support a three-level communications and awareness-raising campaign to increase ECE enrollment and attendance, with themes covering inter alia the importance of quality early stimulation and the benefits of ECE. Topics will include for example the new standards for ECE, the availability of ECE services including the one-year program, positive discipline and good parenting, socio-emotional and physical development for children under five years of age, and lifelong gender inclusion. There will be, first, a national level campaign disseminated through radio and other mass media channels. Second, ECE teachers working in the newly constructed classrooms will promote messages and welcome parents to bring their children to pre- school through door-to-door visits and meetings within their community, as well as through parent-teacher meetings at school. (Teacher capacities in these areas will be built as part of teacher training under Component 2).
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14. Third, in the schools with a cantine scolaire, the project will build the capacities of the team of mothers associated with the cantine to undertake gender-focused activities, through training and the provision of materials. The team will organize regular sessions with local mothers to raise awareness and impart practical skills about maternal and child health and nutrition, child development, the importance and play-based nature of pre-school education, and, particularly for girls, timely enrollment in pre-schooling and completion of basic education. The project will also support MEN-A to review and develop technical recommendations about the cantine scolaire initiative. The project will promote coordination at the local level with the decentralized levels of government to promote complementarity and efficiency between the component and any other relevant investments in the same locality (e.g. in education and programs targeting women and girls).
15. The project will provide technical assistance and financial resources to develop and disseminate the communications and awareness-raising campaign, including materials for mass media; to develop communications materials to be included in the training for pre-school teachers (under component 2); and to build the capacities of cantine scolaire teams. As the pre-school children will be new additions to the school community, the project will also provide materials to the cantine teams for cooking and undertaking their social mobilization activities.
16. The project will finance an impact evaluation to determine the effect of the cantine scolaire as an attractor for pre-school enrollment (by sampling similar beneficiary communities/schools with and without the cantine); the findings will be used to develop recommendations for future expansion of pre-school education. The evaluation will also investigate the effectiveness of the gender-focused activities on promoting girls enrollment and attendance at pre-school.
17. For this component, the release of US$0.5 million of IDA funds will be linked to DLI 1, ‘strengthened policy in ECE.’ The DLI has one result: approval of an ECE policy and implementation plan (Year 1).
Component 2: Improving pre-school and basic education quality using technological innovation (IDA US$8.4 million equivalent)
18. The objective of this component is to improve the quality of play and teaching-learning practices in pre-school and basic education classrooms, with the latter focusing on early primary grades, through the strengthening of the capacities of teachers, school directors and school inspection and pedagogical support services using mobile, digital technologies.
19. All teachers recruited to teach in the newly constructed pre-school classrooms will be trained. To this end, the project will first support the revision of the national ECE curriculum, as needed, to adapt it to the approved policy and standards allowing for one year of early childhood education; and produce the one-year pre-school education program for children aged five years. An in-service training for teachers will also be developed and will be delivered to all teachers recruited to work in the newly constructed classrooms. The training will cover a range of topics including the ECE curriculum and the one-year program, child development, effective classroom practices, the use of the ECE kit materials, implementation strategies for the ECE curriculum, the use of digital technologies and materials (see below), and awareness campaign activities.
20. A modular training program will be developed for central, prefectural and sub-prefectural staff who are expected to support pre-school teachers either directly or indirectly, as well as to manage the network of pre- schools. The program will cover inter alia the management of pre-schools and pre-school services; human
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resources; the pre-school curriculum and education program; the effective delivery of the program including play and pedagogical practices and the use of the ECE kit, digital technology and other materials; pedagogical support including through the use of digital materials and technologies (see below); and child development. The program will be delivered to approximately 500 staff on a modular basis (i.e. customized) to different staff profiles at DNPCEC, INRAP, IRE, DPE and DSEE.
21. All pre-school teachers at the newly constructed schools will be provided with a tablet that has been pre- loaded with content. The content will be based on the training program and will also include pedagogical support materials such as daily activities with step-by-step instructions to be applied during class, the pre- school curriculum including the education program, tips for better pre-school teaching, reading-out-loud materials, child development literature, child development communication messages for parents and community member, gender inclusion materials, and so forth. Pedagogical support staff at prefectural and sub-prefectural levels who are responsible for providing in-school supervision and support to pre-school teachers will also be provided with tablets, which will be loaded with the teachers’ content as well as content to facilitate and encourage pedagogical support.
22. At the primary level, the project will support the development and approval of a national policy on CPD that elaborates standards and institutional responsibilities pertaining to professional practices and in-service training and pedagogical support for both pre-school and basic education levels. The standards will cover inter alia various domains of professional practice (e.g. lesson preparation, classroom management, formative and summative assessments, the use of digital technologies, etc.) and set out in each the competencies expected of a teacher, i.e. what a teacher should know, understand and be able to do in the classroom, to facilitate effective student learning. The standards will be supported by indicators of good practice, to help teachers and others understand how the standards should be realized in a classroom setting, to enable the assessment of a teacher against the standards, and to facilitate the identification of a teacher’s needs for further professional development. The standards will be gradated, that is, be categorized according to levels of professional competency, starting with a beginner teacher and working up to an expert or advanced teacher. Standards will also be elaborated for school directors, covering those domains particular to the director’s functions (e.g. pedagogical leadership, community relations, management of school resources, and so forth). The policy will also stipulate norms of CPD, indicating the kind and amount of CPD opportunities to which teachers are entitled and that will be financed on a recurrent basis by the state budget.
23. Approximately 25,000 primary teachers of public schools (and community schools if the teachers are civil servants) will be trained under this component.36 To this end, the project will support the strengthening of materials developed by INRAP for in-service and pedagogical support training programs for teachers and pedagogical support and supervisory staff, covering the Cours Moyen (Grades 3-4) and Cours Elémentaire (Grades 5-6). It will also create content for the Cours Primaire (Grades 1-2). With a view to progressively eliminating the practice of providing entry to primary school on alternate years at schools that do not have sufficient teachers for each grade, the project will also support the development of content on multi-grade teaching at all levels. The training will be delivered to teachers at the prefectural or sub-prefectural level, gathering together local teachers. The content of any given sub-prefectural training will be determined by
36 This will include persons whose primary function (‘fonction principale’) is as school director but who continue to teach (‘chargé’). These persons – who number roughly 3,500 and constitute 80 percent of all school directors - will be given priority for attending the training and receiving a tablet. As part of the training, they will also receive some training on providing pedagogical support and organizing professional development activities. Including school directors who are also teaching will help to achieve widespread coverage of schools and also facilitate the introduction of mobile technology for the school census. See sub-component 3.2.
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master trainers, using the aforementioned content, based on feedback about training needs provided by teachers, school directors and DSEE/DPE staff; priority will be given to delivering content on the Cours Primaire.
24. The training of the primary teachers will be provided to partially or completely satisfy norms for CPD stipulated by the newly developed CPD policy, mentioned above. (For this reason, the training targets are linked to DLRs, as explained below).
25. The project will support the design and delivery of a pilot stand-alone training for primary school directors. For this purpose, the project will support the strengthening and amplification of materials developed by INRAP for in-service training programs for directors, to cover pedagogical leadership, school-community relations, and budget management.
26. As at the pre-primary level, a modular training program will be developed and delivered to approximately 500 pedagogical and supervisory support staff at central and local levels. The range of topics will be similar, though adapted for the primary level; it will focus primarily on building capacities to provide pedagogical support to teachers, including how to use digital technologies for effective teaching. The staff to be trained for the primary level will be substantially the same as those for the pre-primary level (mentioned above), so these trainings may be combined when being delivered.
27. All strengthened and created content will be sensitive to gender, to ensure inter alia the inclusion of positive role models for girls and the removal of gender biases. All trainings will include a module on gender, covering such topics as the importance of girls’ education and measures to ensure enrollment, the creation of a girl- friendly school environment, and girls’ completion of basic education.
28. All public primary school teachers who receive training will also be provided with a tablet that has been pre- loaded with content. The content will be of a similar nature to the content for pre-primary teachers, though for the primary level. It will be based on the training program. It will also include pedagogical support materials such as daily activities with instructions on how to use them in class; the primary school curriculum and education program; lesson plans; tips on effective teaching-learning practices and classroom management; supplementary reading materials; supplementary exercises for students; materials for continuous professional development; and so forth. The project will also provide tablets pre-loaded with relevant content to all trained teachers who also function as school director,37 and to trained pedagogical support and supervisory staff. Again, the content will be based on the training programs, and be supplemented with materials to facilitate their work.
29. The training programs for the pre-primary and primary teachers, the directors and pedagogical support staff will cover how to use the tablets effectively as a pedagogical and work aid, including the basic IT literacy required to operate the device. As needed, schools and sub-prefectures will be supplied with solar or other charging technology to enable the regular recharging of the tablets. The tablets and charging technology will be financed by the project.
37 That is, persons who function both as school director and as a teacher will be provided with one tablet, pre-loaded with content that covers both functions of being director and a teacher.
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30. All training modules and programs, as well as the use of the tablets including digital content, will be piloted on a limited scale (covering at least 250 teachers) prior to scaling up. The pilot will also test the budget allocation and transfer mechanisms enabling the financing of trainings at prefectural and sub-prefectural levels.
31. The project will finance technical assistance to support the revision of the pre-primary curriculum and development of the one-year education program; the development of the training programs (for pre-primary and primary teachers, primary school directors, and central and sub-central pedagogical support and supervisory staff); the design and delivery of a stand-alone pilot training for school directors; the development/adaptation and loading of the digital content for the tablets; the development of the training plan including the packaging of trainings according to trainee profiles; overseeing implementation of the training plan; the development and operationalization of budget lines and transfer mechanisms enabling the regular allocation and transfer of budgetary funds to local education authorities to carry out in-service training and pedagogical support; the design and implementation of the pilot phase, including the identification of lessons and recommendations, and the fine-tuning of the design and delivery of materials and mechanisms prior to scaling up; and building the capacities of INRAP, DNPCEC, IGEN, and DPE/DSEE to deliver, monitor and report on the training programs and pedagogical support and supervision activities.
32. The project will support as needed the capacity building of a restricted number of pre-primary and/or primary pedagogical support staff to strengthen the design of in-service trainings and other continuous professional development activities or systems, through exposure to best practices in other countries.
33. The project will also support an evaluation of classroom practices in the final year. The evaluation will use a validated instrument and be reliably administered in a representative sample of classrooms. The evaluation will observe teachers who were trained in the prior year and may also include a control sample of teachers not trained. The instrument will be designed to capture inter alia the performance of teachers against the professional standards as well as the effectiveness of teacher training and pedagogical support. The project will finance the design and operational costs associated with conducting the evaluation, as well as the dissemination and discussion of the findings and recommendations.
34. For this component, the release of US$4.5 million of IDA funds will be linked to DLI 2, ‘strengthened in-service teacher professional development.’ The DLI has four DLRs: development and approval of a policy for in-service training and support (Year 1); a pilot project to test the new approved policy is completed, with at least 250 teachers trained, receiving at-school pedagogical support, and using new technologies for professional development and curriculum delivery (Year 2); at least 500 pre-primary and 10,000 primary teachers are trained and receive at-school pedagogical support in line with the new policy, and use new technologies for professional development and curriculum delivery (Year 3); and at least 500 pre-primary and 15,000 primary teachers are trained and receive at-school pedagogical support in line with the new policy, and use new technologies for professional development and curriculum delivery; and teaching-learning practices are evaluated among a representative sample of trained pre-primary and primary teachers (Year 4). In order for these results to be achieved, the Government will need to provide a recurrent budget for in-service training.38
38 While the amounts will be finalized during implementation, it has been provisionally agreed with MEN-A that the in-service training budget will follow INRAP’s low-cost model. According to this model, in-service trainings take place during the vacation period, last ten days, and cost the equivalent of 50,000 GNF per teacher per day (which covers all costs including for trainers). For the pre-school teachers, the unit costs may be higher because of travel and per diem for some participants, as it will likely not be possible to cluster as at the primary level.
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Further, the Government will need to ensure a recurrent budget enabling IGEN, DPE and DSEE staff to make periodic school visits to provide pedagogical support and supervision, as per the norms to be elaborated in the policy.
Component 3: Strengthening education sector management capacity (IDA US$9.7 million equivalent)
35. Sub-component 3.1: Strengthening decentralized management (US$7.2 million). The objective of this sub- component is to strengthen the decentralized management of human resources and schools through the introduction of decentralized recruitment and formula-based non-salary school budgets.
36. The project will support the implementation of the Government’s teacher recruitment reform, which transfers responsibility for recruiting pre-primary, primary and secondary teachers from the central level to the regional and prefectural levels. The new procedures will be implemented across the country, with a view to achieving a better, needs-based distribution of personnel. The project will provide technical assistance for an extended period to build capacities at the regional and prefectural levels to administer the new procedures. The technical assistance will cover the development of detailed operational procedures, training staff on how to apply them, ensuring that operational budgets are being allocated, transferred and executed, periodic on-site assistance to administer the procedures during the recruiting period, and monitoring and reporting on the implementation of the Joint ministerial resolution39. The technical assistance will also work to ensure that the gender aspects of the procedures are applied, to increase the proportion of female teachers particularly at the primary level while maintaining quality.
37. For this activity of the sub-component, the release of US$3.0 million of IDA funds will be linked to DLI 3, ‘the recruitment of teachers is decentralized to the prefectural and regional levels.’ The DLI has four DLRs: the approved Joint ministerial resolution authorizing teacher recruitment by MEN-A authorities at regional and prefectural levels is disseminated to all regional and prefectural education offices (Year 1); a recurrent budget is allocated and transferred to the prefectural level enabling implementation of the Joint ministerial resolution (Year 2); decentralized recruitment procedures are applied in at least 16 prefectures (Year 3); and decentralized recruitment procedures are applied in all 32 prefectures (Year 4). In order for these results to be achieved, the Government will need to provide a recurrent budget for the regional and prefectural offices to enable them to locally administer the recruitment procedures. As noted above, the technical assistance provided by the project will support the central and local authorities to create the necessary budget lines, as needed, as well as to ensure that the funds are transferred on a timely basis.
38. The project will also develop and pilot a formula-based budget transfer to schools to cover non-salary recurrent expenditures for the maintenance and operation of physical premises, and for pedagogical materials. The formula will be developed with the support of technical assistance and will explore the inclusion of fixed and variable components such that inter alia all schools receive a basic amount; that the amount varies to accommodate the different quantitative needs of schools with smaller or larger school populations; and that schools with special circumstances that have budgetary implications are compensated accordingly. In developing the mechanisms for the transfer of budgetary funds, the project will consider the feasibility of using novel and efficient technological solutions (e.g. mobile money transfers). The project will develop operational guidelines for the administration of the budget, covering such matters as the funds
39 Arrêté conjoint A/2019/1597/MFPRRMA/MENA/MB du 3 mai 2019 portant déconcentration des concours de recrutement du personnel enseignant du MEN-A.
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transfer mechanism; the purposes for which the funds can be used; the roles and responsibilities of the school and community pertaining to budget formation, expenditures and reporting; and the supervisory roles and responsibilities of central and local authorities in overseeing the school budgets. The project will also develop materials to build the capacities of all relevant actors to implement the guidelines. These will include training materials for school directors to enable them to form, expend and report on the budget working in close cooperation with the community; as well as the relevant supervisory and financial management staff at central, regional and local levels, to support the regular operation, supervision and reporting of the formula- based budget transfers. The project will finance the training of the school directors and the relevant supervisory and financial management staff. The formula-based school budget will be first piloted in at least 100 schools, fine-tuned following an evaluation, and scaled up to cover at least 3,000 public primary schools.
39. The project will provide technical assistance to support MEN-A and the Ministry of Budget (MOB) to design the formula and the budget transfer mechanism; to develop operational procedures for all stakeholders with implementation responsibilities; to build the capacities of these stakeholders to implement the procedures; to design and evaluate the pilot, refine the model, and develop the scaling-up plan; to oversee and report on implementation of the scaling-up plan; and to periodically assist authorities with implementation responsibilities, and to trouble-shoot implementation constraints that may arise.
40. For this activity of the sub-component, the release of US$3.5 million of IDA funds will be linked to DLI 4, ‘non- salary, recurrent budgets are operationalized at school level.’ The DLI has four DLRs: a plan to operationalize a formula-based non-salary recurrent budget is developed and approved (Year 1); a formula-based non-salary recurrent school budget is being piloted (Year 2); the pilot is evaluated and a roll-out plan is approved (Year 3); and a formula-based non-salary recurrent school budget is allocated and transferred to at least 3,000 public primary schools. In order for these results to be achieved, the Government will need to provide the necessary funds annually for the school-level budgets for the school participating in the pilot in Years 2 and 3, and for a minimum of 3,000 schools thereafter. While the budgetary amounts to be allocated will be decided during project implementation, it has been provisionally agreed with MEN-A that a suitable average would be US$300 per school per year in order to cover an absolute minimum of maintenance activities and pedagogical materials; with no school receiving less than US$200. Further, central and local authorities will require a recurrent budget to enable them to locally supervise that the budget funds are being expended as per operational rules. The technical assistance provided to support this activity will have among its terms of reference support to ensure that the necessary budget lines are created and that the funds are transferred on a timely basis.
41. Sub-component 3.2: Strengthening systems for planning, monitoring and evaluation (US$2.5 million;). The objective of this sub-component is to provide decision-makers and other key stakeholders with timely access to critical and accurate information, through strengthened systems for planning, monitoring and evaluation. There are six main activities.
42. First, the major databases generated by MEN-A will be interlinked through a common platform and integrated portal, with upgraded reports generators, levels of disaggregation and query functions. This will be done through a multi-stage process. All MEN-A databases will be analyzed, with a focus on BSD, DRH and SNFPP, in order to clarify database contents and characteristics, the software used, and the equipment available. This will clarify redundancies across databases to be eliminated, as well as inter-operability constraints. Each service operating a database will do an audit of information requirements and procedures; this will entail a review of information required by the service against the information it currently generates, as well as a
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review of data-collection procedures. This will result in revised data collection formats and procedures. The revision of the formats will eliminate unnecessary information while filling in data gaps; the revised procedures should ensure greater efficiency and reliability. An architectural solution will be identified that enables secure storage of the databases, hierarchical rights to access, and compatibility across databases using one platform. The necessary equipment will be procured, and the software will be developed. All systems will be tested and validated, after which data will be migrated to the new platform. The development of the system, including the selection of the architectural solution, will be overseen by a steering committee advised by a technical team. The steering committee will provide general guidance, approve all technical proposals, and oversee implementation; while the technical team will be responsible for implementation, supported by external technical assistance that will be financed by the project. The project will also finance the hardware and software needed to develop and operationalize the new platform.
43. Second, in parallel with the first activity, BSD’s annual census will be strengthened. As noted above, its information requirements will be reviewed and its data formats revised accordingly. Data collection will be strengthened for timeliness and reliability through the use of mobile technologies. The school census data will be entered using tablets (or other mobile technology), which will be financed by the project. The project will also support the development or adaptation of data entry software for the tablets, as needed,40 as well as loading the software onto the tablets prior to their distribution. Responsibility for initial data entry will depend on the type and level of school, and will be clarified further in revised BSD School Census procedures. It has been provisionally agreed that for public pre-primary and primary schools (and community schools where the director is a civil servant), data entry will be done by the directors if they have received a tablet as part of training under Component 2; approximately 80 percent of directors will receive a tablet. For private primary schools and those public primary schools where the director does not have a tablet, data entry will be done by staff at the DSEE, which will be provided with tablets accordingly. At the secondary level (public and private), the DPE (Chargé Statistique) will be responsible for data entry, which will also be provided with tablets accordingly. Mobile technologies to gather and enter the school census data will introduced prudently. That is, at least for the first year, and until such time that the BSD is satisfied that tablet-based data entry is both reliable and sustainable, the manual entry of data (i.e. the existing system) will continue in parallel.
44. Third, user-friendly interfaces in the form of dashboards will be developed to access MEN-A’s integrated databases, and will be made accessible through the internet for stakeholders. Dashboards for decision- makers will be designed to identify indicator values signaling the need for decisions to be taken. The project will finance technical assistance required to support the development of the dashboards.
45. Fourth, the project will finance the capacity building of staff at all levels to use the EMIS and fulfill their roles in using new software, in terms of data entry, processing and analysis, as well as dashboard use. This will include, inter alia, training of school directors and DPE/DSEE staff on using mobile technologies to enter school-level data.
46. Fifth, capacities at MEN-A, BSD and SCNESE will be strengthened to design, administer and use large-scale learning assessments for system diagnostics, resulting in a policy framework and strategic plan for system- level performance evaluations as well as strengthened procedures for test development, administration, analysis and reporting.
40 Working from the software already developed and tested as part of a pilot.
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47. Finally, the project will support strengthening the capacities of MEN-A for strategic planning, by conducting four thematic exercises with strategic and planning implications. First, an evidence-based strategy will be elaborated for the future construction and maintenance of education infrastructure, with a view to ensuring an adequate availability of quality buildings to keep up with demographic growth, and equitable access. Second, a unique identification code for staff posts, including teachers, will be piloted. This approach entails assigning a unique identifier code for posts at schools and elsewhere through the education system; and matching the code to another unique identifier code of the person occupying the post. This would allow the MEN-A to easily identify what post any given staff member is currently occupying, and more generally to identify how staff are distributed. It will also allow MEN-A to compare staffing with available posts at any given school or education office (or aggregated area). The pilot will be evaluated; findings and recommendations for extension will be formally considered by MEN-A senior management. Two other thematic studies of priority interest will also be identified by BSD and carried out, of which one has been tentatively identified as an evaluation of a government-supported pilot on the use of national languages in the early years of primary schooling as well as an analysis of the implications, resources and actions required for scaling up. The project will finance technical assistance and materials required to develop and disseminate the strategy and thematic studies, as well as to design, implement and evaluate the pilot.
48. For this sub-component, the release of US$ 1.0 million of IDA funds will be linked to DLI 5, ‘decision-makers and other stakeholders have access to timely education system information.’ The DLI has two DLRs: school- level information for current school year is inputted by March 31st using mobile technologies in at least 90 percent of pre-primary, primary and secondary education schools (public, community and private), and integrated into a national database (Year 2); and web-access dashboards are used by at least 20 percent of decision-makers and other stakeholders, with key education indicators and query functions linked to national database with disaggregation to school level (Year 4). In order for these results to be achieved (particularly for Year 4), the GoG will need to make available a recurrent budget that will enable the dashboards and database to be accessed through the internet.
Component 4: Project Management and Monitoring and Evaluation (IDA US$ 1.7 million equivalent)
49. The objective of this component is to support project management, monitoring and evaluation, and technical assistance to ensure efficient and effective management of project implementation and the achievement of the DLIs. This component will finance project operating costs for the PCU covering, inter alia, non-salary personnel costs associated with seconded staff, the hiring of supporting-role technical assistance, equipment, supervision costs (transportation and per diem) and expenses related to the execution of project administrative, fiduciary, M&E and reporting functions, as well as expenses related to the monitoring of E&S aspects. Further, this component will finance any third-party verifications required to verify DLRs, as provided for in the DLI verification protocols. Finally, it will finance capacity building activities to strengthen MEN-A’s M&E, E&S and fiduciary functions.
50. Citizen Engagement. Under the project, in addition to promoting stakeholder participation across the components, a selected set of citizen engagement activities will be supported to improve the quality of education services through better participation, transparency and accountability. These activities could include: (i) facilitating dialogue and coordination between the MEN-A deconcentrated focal points and the local decentralization governments to better incorporate education related matters in the local planning processes; (ii) citizens participation in monitoring education services potentially using mobile technology, which is already being tried by the MEN-A in a small scale; (iii) visualization and disclosure of education/school
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data through a MEN-A website; and (iv) raising awareness of the beneficiaries and key stakeholders about the existing GRM, including the local-level complaints handling committees.
51. Components 1-3 require some technical assistance. These needs are summarized in the table below.
Table 2.1: Technical Assistance for the Project (Summary) Component Technical assistance 1. Improving equitable access to ECE policy and strategy pre-school education • Revision of ECE standards, development of ECE policy and plan, support to plan operationalization • Review and strengthening of cantine scolaire program, and development of terms of reference for associated gender activities • Development and implementation of campaign for ECD/ECE awareness- raising and social mobilization (including gender activities) • Evaluation of effectiveness of cantine scolaire and gender activities
Civil works • Revision of construction norms and standards • Finalize list of sites and manage contracts with bureau de d’étude and bureau de supervision • Bureau d’études for site designs and oversight • Bureau de supervision for site supervision 2: Improving pre-school and • Development of professional standards and CPD policy and basic education quality using implementation plan; revision of ECE curriculum and development of technological innovation one-year education program; development of training program content for ECE, CP and multi-grade, and strengthening of CM/CE content; strengthening/development of training program for school directors on pedagogical leadership and community relations; strengthening/ development of training program for pedagogical supervisory and support staff; adaptation of training program content for tablets, development/ adaptation of other materials for tablets, and loading onto tablets; building training capacity; develop training plan aligned with CPD policy, and systems for financing, monitoring and reporting; design and oversee implementation of pilot roll-out of trainings, report on findings and recommendations, and fine-tune model; and support to implementation and oversight of scaled-up policy-aligned trainings. • Sample-based evaluation of teaching-learning practices of trained teachers 3: Strengthening education 3.1: Strengthening decentralized management sector management capacity Decentralized recruitment • Capacity building and support to regional and prefectural offices responsible for decentralized recruitment Non-salary recurrent school budget • Development and support to operationalization of non-salary recurrent school budget, including piloting phase and scale up • Development of training materials for school directors • Evaluation of non-salary recurrent school budget mechanisms and impact
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3.2: Strengthening systems for planning, M&E • Analysis of MEN-A information systems (IS), design and operationalization of integrated IS platform, including software development, development of dashboards and capacity building of users • Building SCNESE/BSD capacities in large-scale learning assessments, development of national strategy • Development and piloting of unique code for personnel posts • Capacity building for infrastructural planning and development of infrastructure plan • Execution of two thematic planning studies
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ANNEX 3: Economical and Financial Analysis
COUNTRY: Guinea Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education
1. This annex summarizes the economic argument for investing in the Guinea Education Project for Results in Early Childhood and Basic Education by presenting: (i) the rationale for public sector provision/financing; (ii) the expected development impact, including a cost-benefit and financial analysis; and (iii) the value added by the World Bank.
A. Rationale for public sector provision/financing
2. The public sector will need to continue and indeed strengthen its support for early and basic education, because of the tendency of households to underinvest in education and an entrenched perception and practice (particularly among the poor and in rural areas) that education is largely a public sector responsibility. The private sector has increased in recent years, and covers approximately one quarter of primary students; but private schools are unavailable in rural areas, and lack financing mechanisms to make them accessible to the poor. The education sector brings individual benefits, though these are delayed and are perceived (with some justification) to be uncertain; thus discouraging household investment, particularly among the poor who per force have shorter time horizons, are more exposed to poor quality education and thus uncertain returns, and can ill afford exposure to downside risk. At a broader, social level there are numerable benefits to education pertaining inter alia to growth, productivity and health (including better care of the next generation). Individuals are unlikely to internalize these externalities, and so, again, underinvest. For these reasons, public investment in pre-primary and basic education is justified. Further, public interventions as planned under the project pertaining to human resources, maintenance of capital stock, and management information systems as well as strengthening local governance are also likely to create efficiency gains that would not otherwise be achieved.
B. Expected development impact and cost-benefit and fiscal impact analysis
3. The economic returns of the project have been calculated by relating the projected benefits to the budgeted costs. The present value of both is calculated, with the latter deducted from the former to determine the net present value (NPV). The expected flow of anticipated capital expenditures and returns related to the project have also been analyzed to calculate the economic internal rate of return (IRR). It has been found that the project’s NPV is US$27.6 million and the IRR is 16.2 percent, indicating that the project is economically justified. The costs and benefits are amplified below, followed by a sensitivity analysis to test the robustness of the result.
4. Project benefits have been calculated in two parts: pertaining to beneficiaries of component one (C1), which focuses on a subset of 1,000 education institutions (pre-school classrooms for public primary schools), and has a specific set of beneficiaries; and for the other components, which focus mainly on primary students as a whole as beneficiaries.
5. The economic benefits of the project derive from the incremental economic benefit beneficiaries can be expected to accrue as a result of the project. This requires one to estimate the number of beneficiaries; the benefit they derive from the project in terms of learning; and the effect this learning benefit has on their
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economic output encompassing both market income and home production. There is some difficulty in precisely estimating both the learning benefit and resultant impact on economic output in the Guinean context, given the paucity of data. The former have been estimated here based on the broader academic research literature, using research based on education contexts similar to Guinea. The latter are estimated using education-stratified data from the Enquête Légère sur la Pauvreté 2012 (ELEP 2012). 41
6. Component 1 beneficiaries will derive benefits from attending one year of quality pre-school education, followed by attendance at primary school with strengthened quality of instruction (see below). The project will finance the construction of 1,000 public pre-school classrooms, including the provision of equipment, furniture and play- and teaching-learning materials. It is assumed that each classroom will provide one year of pre-school education to forty children each, that is, to annual cohorts of 40,000 children; and that the useful life of the classrooms will enable a total throughput of fifteen cohorts. It is estimated that the pre-school year combined with the quality improvements at the primary and system level resulting from other components will increase the average length of schooling for these beneficiaries by 3.5 per cent.42 This is equivalent to a per-cohort increase of 2,875 primary completers and 635 secondary completers.
7. For the other components, the benefits accrue to cohorts of students first starting their primary education at the beginning of the project. These students will benefit from strengthened teaching-learning practices that will result from project activities pertaining to school-based professional development and support, including the provision of technologies that will increase teachers’ access to materials for professional development and curriculum delivery. Benefits will also accrue from the increased availability of school non-salary recurrent budgets, as well as project-support measures to strengthen management systems. Given the effective life of professional development initiatives and the technological materials provided by the project, the benefits are assumed to accrue to five cohorts. It is estimated that these interventions will increase the average length of schooling for beneficiaries by 1.5 per cent. This is equivalent to an initial cohort increase of 7,422 primary completers and 1,623 secondary completers.
8. Based on data from the ELEP 2012, the average annual economic benefit (in US$ at then-current exchange rates) for primary completers relative to non-primary completers is approximately US$201, and for lower secondary completers relative to primary completers is US$417. It is assumed that this differential will accrue to 58 percent of the extra graduates (corresponding to those who enter the workforce or are otherwise primarily engaged in economic activity) who will enter into economic activity upon completing their education.
41Enquête Légère sur la Pauvreté 2012, INS 2012. The ELEP 2012 is somewhat outdated, particularly in light of the effects of the Ebola crisis of 2013-2015; and the published data are stratified by levels rather than years of education. This necessitates the conversion of the benefits in terms of increased schooling per student into overall student years for cohorts as a whole, and then converting that into the equivalent numbers of students who would achieve the next level of education. However, the ELEP 2012 has the merit of being national data, and yields education-related economic results that are more conservative than other findings in the academic literature pertaining to Sub- Saharan Africa, giving one more confidence in the robustness of the analysis findings. 42 See e.g. Bietenbeck, J. et al. 2013. ‘Preschool Attendance, School Progression and Cognitive Skills in East Africa.’ The students examined had a primary school completion profile very similar to the Guinean average. The percentage used here also includes the benefits derived from the other components, which will affect the C1 cohorts once they move from pre-school into primary school.
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9. In order to estimate costs for the NPV and IRR calculations, the expected economic costs incurred as a result of project implementation must be calculated as cost streams. The costs are those associated with activities financed by the project, as well as other incremental costs incurred as long as the beneficiary cohorts are in school, including the salaries associated with the functioning of new pre-school classes; the incremental school non-salary recurrent budget; and the Project PVs, CBR and IRR incremental household costs associated with the PV of benefits (US$) 88,621,780 extra years of schooling.43 PV of costs (US$) 55,017,775 NPV (US$) 27,604,005 44 10. The inflation rate and discount rate are Cost:benefit ratio (CBR) 1.5 assumed to be 3 percent and 9 percent, IRR (%) 16.2 respectively. Benefits are limited to 25 years beyond the project life. The results of the analysis are presented in the adjacent table.
11. Sensitivity analysis. The NPV and IRR calculated above are sensitive to assumptions. Two alternative scenarios have been calculated. The low case scenario assumes that both the learning effect and the incremental economic returns to education are reduced by 10 percent. The high case scenario assumes that the learning effect and the incremental economic returns are both increased by 10 percent. The results are presented in the table below.
Sensitivity Analysis Base case Low case High case (Learning effect and (Learning effect and economic returns to economic returns to education both reduced education both by 10%) increased by 10%) NPV (US$) 27,604,005 10,740,781 46,253,286 Cost:benefit 1.5 1.2 1.8 IRR (percent) 16.2 13.9 18.5
12. It can be seen that the NPV varies from US$10.7 to 46.3 million; the cost-benefit ratio from 1.2 to 1.8; and the IRR from 13.9 percent to 18.5 percent. The low-case results indicate that the economic justification for the project is quite robust, a reflection of the project’s strong economic returns and a finding that is consistent with the literature and results elsewhere. Indeed, in order for the NPV to become negative, the learning effect and the economic returns would both have to be reduced by approximately 20 percent, thus providing one with substantial room for error when analyzing the project for economic viability.
13. The economic and sensitivity analyses indicate that investing in the project is economically justified, and could yield relatively high returns, with an IRR ranging from 13.9 percent to 18.5 percent and an NPV between US$10.7 and 46.3 million. These estimates are conservative, given the prudent nature of many of the assumptions, including tightly limiting the number of cohorts included in the benefits stream and capping the stream at 25 years.
43 Household costs per pupil per education level are taken from ELEP 2012. 44 Adjusted for the GNF/USD exchange rate.
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14. Other returns. The returns calculated above do not capture other important benefits. Numerous social and health benefits have been found to result from higher levels of education across Sub-Saharan Africa including Guinea.45 While the precise effects of this project in these areas are not estimated here, findings from the 2012 Guinea Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) suggest that the increased levels of education acquired through the project can be expected to contribute to such results as: reduced child mortality and morbidity, reduced levels of child stunting, increased knowledge of birth control, increased number of antenatal visits, increased level of next-generation children’s education, and reading the newspaper. Many of these have delayed but significant economic benefits. These benefits buttress the economic case for financing the project.
15. Financial analysis and sustainability. The effectiveness, sustainability and affordability of the project require that the pre-primary, primary and secondary sectors be adequately funded for the foreseeable future, such that project activities not be undermined either in terms of implementation or results; that any incremental public expenditures entailed by but not directly financed by the project be sustainably covered by the public budget.
16. Education spending at the pre-school, primary and secondary sub-sectors (as well as for literacy) increased on average by 22 percent annually (9 percent in real terms) over the period 2006-2016.46 As can be seen from the table below, forecast government revenues and education budgets point to sustained levels of increased education spending, with spending on these sub-sectors planned to increase on an annual basis by 27.5 percent during the period 2019-21. This growth rate exceeds the rate for the overall government budget, indicating a relatively high priority for these sub-sectors over the medium to long term.
Projected expenditures for the Government, including for MEN-A (2019-2021) (GNF millions) Budget entity 2019 2020 2021 Increase 2019- 2021 (annual basis) Government 22,672.93 25,997.83 29,788.49 14.6% MEN-A 2,070.55 2,707.94 3,367.55 27.5%
17. The structure and evolution of the education budget indicate continued exposure to some risks. In particular, the capital budget is relatively under-funded and the recurrent budget is heavily weighted towards salaries. In 2016, capital expenditures constituted only 2.4 percent of total expenditures at the pre-primary, primary and secondary level, and moreover had been growing at a lower rate than recurrent expenditures over the past decade. The current physical state of schools, the levels of overcrowding and demographic growth forecasts together indicate that the capital budget is at risk of not being adequate from a long-term perspective. On the recurrent side, in primary education (as in other pre-tertiary sub-sectors), expenditures are dominated by salaries. In 2016, they constituted 84 percent of expenditures; approximately one third of the salary bill was for non-teaching staff. Very little of the remaining recurrent budget actually reaches schools, with consequences for building maintenance and providing even basic teaching inputs that can help
45 See e.g. della Porta (2000), Aguero and Bharawadj (2011), and Nimubona and Vencatachellum (2007). 46 All data in this section are taken from Analyse Sectorielle de l’Education et de la Formation en Guinée, Décembre 2018, with the exception of the budget forecast, which is taken from the Ministère du Budget’s July 2018 Document de Programmation Budgétaire Pluriannuelle (Table no. 18).
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to strengthen the quality of instruction. This is one reason why the economic analysis above made quite conservative assumptions about the useful life of buildings. The school non-salary recurrent budget supported by the project is designed to help address this issue.
18. Future education resources for the pre-primary, primary and secondary level will continue to be constrained in part by political choices governing both total resources allocated to education, and within education to the pre-primary, primary and secondary levels. Education expenditures constitute roughly only 2.4 percent of GDP and 13 percent of public expenditures. These are both well below averages for the region and low- income countries around the world. Within education, the pre-tertiary levels are relatively underfunded given their far larger enrollment numbers. In 2016, 49.4 percent of education expenditures went to the pre-primary, primary and secondary levels (as well as literacy); tertiary education received 46.3 percent.
19. With respect to sustainability, the main incremental public recurrent costs associated with the project are the teacher salaries for new pre-school classrooms, and the school non-salary recurrent budget. The incremental salaries can be accommodated within budget forecasts; moreover, the MEN-A has indicated its commitment to these expenditures, while the education strategy calls for an expansion of publicly funded pre-school education. The school non-salary budget would constitute an increase in the existing recurrent budget of less than one per cent; can be contained within the budget forecast; and in the long run should help to alleviate the capital budget by helping to extend the useful life of buildings.
C. Value added by the World Bank
20. The World Bank is well placed to support the pre-primary and primary education sector in Guinea given its global and local operational experience and technical expertise. The World Bank has extensive national experience, having financed or supervised multiple operations in the education sector over the past twenty- five years (most recently the FoCEB); and is able to draw on a deep well of experience and networks based in similar countries across the region. Further, the World Bank’s multi-sectoral capacities will add value given the need to view pre-primary and basic education from a broad perspective, encompassing particularly health and early childhood development. The project will benefit from the World Bank’s extensive analytical expertise and research, including for example the WDR 2018 (‘Learning to Realize Education Promise’), the 2015 Public Expenditure Review (particularly vol.1 on Education), and the World Bank-supported Guinean Education Sectoral Analysis of 2018. The World Bank is also recognized as a leader in the education sector, and has a strong track record of convening and coordinating with development partners and key stakeholders.
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ANNEX 4: Map
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