ENVIRONMENTAL AND SOCIAL MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK-ADDITIONAL FINANCING:Zambia Education Enhancement Project Project ID: No. P180401
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Government of Republic of Zambia (GRZ) is seeking additional financing from the World Bank for the Zambia Education Enhancement Project (ZEEP) Additional Financing (AF) to help us scale up the geographical as well as technical scope of interventions to achieve systemic impact. Project Description -ZEEP Phase I The Zambia Education Enhancement Project (ZEEP) phase I is a national project by the Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) under the Ministry of Education (MoE) that aims is to improve the quality of teaching and learning in mathematics and science in targeted primary and secondary schools and to increase equitable access to secondary education. The Project comprised three components namely: Improving the Quality of Teaching and Learning, Increasing Equitable Access to Secondary Education, Enhancing M&E Capacity and Project Coordination ZEEP-Additional Financing Proposed Additional Financing (AF) to ZEEP aims to build on the on-going reforms focusing on system-wide approach with all actors aligned around learning and equitable access, so quality education reaches everyone. ZEEP, which uses an Investment Project Financing (IPF) with Results-based Financing (RBF) modality, is designed to achieve systemic impact in terms of reforming teacher’s professional development practices to improve teachers’ competencies; transform teaching learning practice; and provide critical teaching learning material inputs to the schools to assist better teaching and learning. ZEEP is also increasing access to secondary education through expanding eighty-two existing primary schools, where a significant number of students move out of the system after completing primary because of lack of secondary schools in the vicinity. The girls are the worst affected as they are forced to discontinue schooling because of long distance to the closest secondary school, which on an average is 15 to 20 kilometers away from the habitation without any transport facility. Although ZEEP is supporting transformative reforms, the geographical scope of coverage is relatively small because of relatively limited resources in view of the greater needs in the country. Additional financing to the tune of US$120 million or more to the ZEEP would help us scale up the geographical as well as technical scope of interventions to achieve systemic impact. The Project could cover a large number of low-performing primary and secondary schools and teachers out of the existing 11,000 schools and more than 100,000 teachers respectively. Furthermore, equity issues, particularly related to gender, and rural-urban in terms of access to quality secondary education could be addressed more effectively through both supply and demand side interventions. The proposed second AF (AF2) will introduce the following changes: (i) revision of the construction package to include additional infrastructure to meet the new minimum school design standards requested by the GRZ; (ii) revision of activities under non construction component particularly those to be covered by the government sector wide programs; (iii) revision of the disbursement linked indicators (DLIs) and disbursement linked results (DLRs) in the results framework. In addition, the AF provides an opportunity to strengthen governance and transparency mechanisms including those around fiduciary and safeguards. There will be ii no change to the Project Development Objective (PDO), geographical coverage, targeted beneficiaries or closing date. An additional 120 schools are earmarked to be built in all the 10 provinces including Copperbelt, North-Western and Western. This investment will increase the current number of secondary schools by about 20 percent. Weekly boarding facilities for both boys and girls, through the costed national school infrastructure development plan is also planned to be built in 25 schools. Furthermore, the construction of teachers’ residences was expected to be built on a needs-basis with water and sanitation facilities18, and electricity provision, as well as the rehabilitation of existing structures that pose safety risks to students and teachers. While construction of secondary schools will be nationwide, the critical rehabilitation, WASH, teacher residences, electricity provision, etc. will be focused on the project target schools. Other planned activities include supporting training of province and district-level building officers and engineers, technical supervisors, and community-level Project Implementation Committees (PICs) on procurement, financial management (FM), and technical aspects of construction; use of a tablet-based monitoring system and related training; hiring of an independent third party construction supervision and support consultant. To forge stronger synergy with the KGS component of the GEWEL Project, need-based weekly boarding facilities will be constructed, and WASH facilities will be provided in the schools hosting a sizable number of KGS beneficiary girls. All construction financed under ZEEP-AF will adhere to defined quality standards and disability friendly norms.
