DAR ES SALAAM, Dec. 22 (Xinhua) -- The World Bank has approved 500 million U.S. dollars that will benefit more than 12 million children in preprimary and primary education in Tanzania's mainland, the bank said in a statement on Wednesday.
The program called BOOST Primary Student Learning Program for Results is aimed at making preprimary and primary education better and more accessible across the east African country, said the statement.
The statement said the education program supported by World Bank will help make Tanzania primary schools safer, more inclusive and child friendly and enhance teachers' subject content knowledge.
The overall goal is to ensure an education system that supports all children, including the most marginalized, to enroll early, develop strong foundational skills and complete a quality education, said the statement.
The program which was jointly formulated with the government and other development partners will support Tanzanian government's education sector development plan in the next five years by providing results-based financing to catalyze reforms, said the statement.
"Tanzania has made important progress in education by expanding access and reducing gender disparity in basic education," said Mara Warwick, World Bank Country Director for Tanzania.
"Investing in the education of young and vulnerable children, especially girls, is a critical building block to accelerating the country's progress towards inclusive growth, poverty reduction and stronger upward mobility of all Tanzanians," she said.
Primary enrollment in Tanzania increased since 2013, said the statement, adding that Tanzania's mainland now has 12.3 million pupils attending preprimary and primary classes.
Nevertheless, Tanzania's education sector remains constrained by several key factors including inequitable access to early learning and primary education for rural marginalized and vulnerable groups, inadequate school learning environments exacerbated by declining financing and increasing school populations, and a shortage of teachers and low teacher competencies, said the statement. Enditem
