Education in Nicaragua
Despite significant progress, such as the reduction to 5% of the adult population’s illiteracy rate and the increase of net primary enrollment rates, Nicaragua faces various challenges in the education sector. These include a high number of out-of-school children, especially in rural areas, low levels of student learning outcomes in regional assessments (which are linked to poor preparation of primary school teachers and insufficient learning materials), and low quality of preschool education, particularly among disadvantaged rural households. Adequate baseline data and solid statistics continue to be a problem imposing difficulties in planning as well as in monitoring the sector.
Nicaragua’s strategic education plan includes interventions focused on expanding access to preschool education, universal completion of six grades of primary education, and universal access to lower secondary education (grades 7-9). Institutional strengthening is another transversal priority of the education plan.
The objectives of Nicaragua’s strategic education plan are to:
- Promote access and equity by:
- Accelerating progress in achieving quality universal primary and secondary education, and ensuring a gradual increase in the percentage of students entering, completing and advancing to the next grade.
- Increasing the participation of boys and girls in early childhood education, with the participation of the educational community and families in early childhood activities that promote adequate youth development.
- Reducing illiteracy as much as possible and increasing levels of school completion.
- Promote a quality education by:
- Improving the level of student achievement in order to successfully promote personal, family and community development, as well as strengthen national identity.
- Strengthen sector management by:
- Ensuring human and institutional development that promotes efficient and effective educational management.
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Three-year-old Lauri attends Ruben Dario preschool in Matagalpa, Nicaragua.
Nicaragua is using the US$16.7 million GPE grant together with US$1.7 million from its own resources, US$33.39 million from the European Union, and US$15.80 million from the World Bank to finance the education sector strategy support project.
The main objectives of this project are to increase access to preschool and lower secondary education in participating municipalities and improve preschool learning conditions and education quality as well as completion of lower secondary education nationwide.
The education sector strategy support project has three components:
- Increase access and improve learning conditions of preschool education in 43 out of 153 municipalities where poverty levels are highest, key education indicators are the worst, and there is significant unmet demand. This will be achieved by:
- Improving / expanding preschool education infrastructure (200 preschools)
- Developing a unified curriculum that covers the three levels of preschool education; aligning classroom learning instruments; and developing a preschool teacher training curriculum
- Training for pre-service and in-service preschool teachers
- Improving the supply of learning materials
- Developing an early childhood development assessment instrument and an early childhood environment rating scale.
- Improve access, quality and completion of lower secondary education by:
- Improving / expanding lower secondary education infrastructure
- Improving teacher effectiveness
- Improving the supply of textbooks and learning materials
- Build institutional capacity of the ministry of education by:
- Supporting capacity building needs of four general directorates of preschool education, secondary education, teacher training, and school infrastructure in the ministry of education
- Supporting the ministry in the administration, financial management, auditing and procurement aspects of the project
The local education group in Nicaragua is comprised of the government and development partners. The grant agent is the World Bank and USAID is currently the coordinating agency.
Source: World Bank - Education Sector Strategy Support Project. April 2013.
Grants
All amounts are in US dollars.
| Grant type | Years | Allocations | Disbursements | Grant agent | |
| Program implementation | 2013-2017 | 16,700,000 | 16,700,000 | IBRD | Completion report |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006-2010 | 17,000,000 | 17,000,000 | IBRD | Completion report | |
| 2004-2005 | 7,000,000 | 7,000,000 | IBRD | Completion report | |
| Sector plan development | 2015 | 500,000 | 419,516 | IBRD | Completion report |
| TOTAL | 41,200,000 | 41,119,516 |
GPE has also provided the Foro de Educacion y Desarrollo Humano De La Iniciativa Por Nicaragua (FEDH IPN) with a grant from the Civil Society Education Fund, to support its engagement in education sector policy dialogue and citizens’ voice in education quality, equity, and financing and sector reform.
Education sector progress
The graphs below show overall progress in the education sector in Nicaragua, and GPE data shows the country progress on 16 indicators monitored in the GPE Results Framework.
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Source: World Bank - Education Data
Data on education are compiled by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics from official responses to surveys and from reports provided by education authorities in each country.