The World Bank has offered $500 million interest-free credit to India for improving the standards of secondary education, an official statement said Friday. The World Bank on Thur-sday approved the credit that will help the Indian government’s effo-rts to make good quality education “available, accessible and affordable to all young persons at the secondary level (grades 9 and 10).”
The project will support all activities as envisioned in the $12.9 billion Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) programme, a flagship government of India programme for gradual universalisation of secondary education, the World Bank said in a statement. “This World Bank project will support the objectives and activities of RMSA. It will facilitate a whole set of mechanisms built around identifying what is needed to improve the quality of secondary education,” said Venu Rajamony, joint secretary, economic affairs in India’s finance ministry.
The project will be financed by a credit from the International Develop-ment Association (IDA) — the World Bank’s concessionary lending arm — which provides interest-free loans with 25 years to maturity and a grace period of five years. The money will be used for setting up libraries, computer laboratories, upgrading primary schools in to secondary schools and providing training to teachers.
Expansion, repair and renovation will take place in 60,000 government secondary schools; 44,000 upper primary schools will be upgraded into secondary schools; and 11,000 new secondary and senior secondary schools will come up in underserved areas.