When Guinea-Bissau joined GPE in 2010, the government and partners endorsed an education sector plan for 2011–2013. But a coup in 2012 led many donors to withdraw support, and the plan could not be fully implemented.

Determined to keep education going despite political instability and a lack of resources, the local education group organized Guinea-Bissau’s first joint education sector review in 2014 and two others in 2020 and 2022.

Members of the local education group strongly mobilized around the GPE partnership model and provided valuable technical and financial support to the government in the preparation of Guinea-Bissau's 2017–2025 education sector plan, which was endorsed by development partners in 2017.

The country remains fragile and severely lacks resources, making it difficult to deliver quality education, but the government has made significant progress.

An updated curriculum for primary education

In 2015, the government launched the first curriculum reform in Guinea-Bissau since the 1980s, modernizing outdated content and addressing low learning levels in Portuguese and math.

The new primary education curriculum takes a competency-based approach and includes cross-cutting areas such as life skills, social cohesion and citizenship education. More active and child-centered teaching pedagogies aim to improve the quality of learning.

In 2022, 10 schools piloted new teachers’ guides and students’ textbooks for grades 1–4. The materials were finalized in 2023 and distributed to 560 public primary schools in five targeted regions in 2024.

Based on evidence from these schools, the education ministry is expanding the new curriculum to all other schools and regions.

Currently, Guinea-Bissau is developing new materials for grades 5 and 6 with the support of UNICEF.

Training teachers to use new learning materials

To ensure teachers understand the curriculum and how to use the new teaching and learning materials, the education ministry implemented a teacher training program from 2022 to 2024.

The program reached half of all grade 1–4 teachers in Guinea-Bissau:

To support in-service teacher training activities, schools were provided with tablets, speakers and solar-powered powerbanks.

The tablets contain a platform with all materials related to the new primary education curriculum, including 200 audio lessons to support Portuguese and math curriculum delivery for grades 1 and 2.

Pre- and post-training tests revealed that over 80% of teachers trained demonstrated improved capacity to teach both Portuguese and math.

This training is now being scaled up to all public primary schools in the country.

The new teaching and learning materials and teacher training program were made possible thanks to a GPE grant of US$4.7 million and an International Development Association grant of $10.7 million, both managed by the World Bank for the period 2018–2024.

Additionally, a GPE grant of $2.8 million, managed by the World Bank for the period 2021–2025, is strengthening institutional capacity within the Ministry of National and Higher Education to improve sector performance.

Going forward, the ministry and partners are focused on achieving the priority reform described in Guinea-Bissau's Partnership Compact: improve access, retention, quality, inclusion and internal efficiency of schools for children from preschool to lower secondary education.

The reform builds on progress and lessons learned to deliver quality education to all children.