The Global Partnership for Education approves US$20.6 million grant to support children’s education in Zimbabwe
School children in Zimbabwe. Credit: GPE/ Carine Durand

Siem Reap, Cambodia, 02 Dec. 2016 – Today, the Board of Directors of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) approved a US$20.6 million grant for education in Zimbabwe

The four-year grant will focus on enhancing access to quality education and improving learning for children and youth, especially for more than one million disadvantaged orphans and vulnerable children.

Zimbabwe has made encouraging progress in its education outcomes in recent years,” said Alice Albright, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Partnership for Education. “With this grant, the Global Partnership for Education is pleased to continue to help Zimbabwe build on its growing commitment to give all its children the quality schooling they deserve.”

It is absolutely critical that as our primary and secondary education system makes a turn towards qualitative and inclusive transformation”, said Dr. Lazarus Dokora, Minister of Primary and Secondary Education of Zimbabwe. “The GPE grant provides the key resources that nudge forward the education sector strategic plan. Many experts, professionals and officers have contributed immensely in terms of work-hours. To all of these colleagues, I say thank you.”

The GPE grant will help Zimbabwe to further strengthen its education system through development and operationalization of policies that improve equity, including school financing and inclusive education.

Specifically, the grant will support children with special needs, non-formal access to learning, teacher professional development, distribution of learning materials for the most disadvantaged schools and the introduction of continuous assessment systems from early childhood programs to upper secondary school.

GPE grant funding will also be used to strengthen leadership, management and research capacities for better planning, data use and evidenced based decision making at both national and sub-national levels.

Zimbabwe is eligible for an additional US$8.8 million, which represents the results-based component of the allocation made by the GPE Board. The country intends to apply for this portion, which will include specific indicators for improvements in equity, learning and efficiency, in 2017. 

Zimbabwe joined GPE in 2013 and received a GPE grant of US$23.6 million to support the implementation of its education sector plan for 2013 to 2016.

UNICEF is GPE’s grant agent in Zimbabwe supervising the grant implementation. The UK Department of International Development is the GPE coordinating agency in country.

The previous funding enabled Zimbabwe to boost learning outcomes in basic education through training more than 23,000 teachers in the use of early reading materials and more than 28,000 teachers in the use of the Performance Lag Address Program (PLAP). The GPE funding also enabled the country to capture teacher qualification data electronically and train provincial and cluster supervisors in the use of teacher professional standards.

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Media contacts:

In Harare: Victor Chinyama, vchinyama@unicef.org;

In Washington, D.C.: Alexandra Humme, ahumme@globalpartnership.org

 

School children in Zimbabwe. Credit: GPE/ Carine Durand

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