World Bank OKs $600 million loan towards Philippines learning upgrade

MANILA, Philippines — The World Bank has approved a loan amounting to $600 million to support a project that will help address the learning crisis in the Philippines.

In a statement yesterday, the multilateral lender said that its board of executive directors approved the loan for the Project for Learning Upgrade Support and Decentralization.

The project is expected to benefit 21 million learners enrolled in kindergarten to Grade 10 in public schools and in programs of the Department of Education (DepEd)’s Alternative Learning System, as well as 777,000 teachers.

It is expected to help address the country’s learning crisis in basic education, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Studies show that 91 percent of 10-year-olds in the Philippines cannot read and understand an age-appropriate text.

Low learning outcomes in the country are linked to inadequate teaching and learning conditions, including limited teacher capacity, lack of infrastructure and subpar quantity and quality of learning materials.

To help address these challenges, the project will help K-10 learners catch up and excel by focusing on foundational literacy and numeracy improvement.

It will support the DepEd’s learning acceleration and recovery program, while improving how learning is measured.

The project will also strengthen teaching and leadership, expand access to inclusive teaching-learning materials and advance digitalization and decentralization programs at the DepEd.

As part of the program, grants will be provided to selected DepEd regional offices and over 11,100 schools to accelerate learning.

“For the Philippines, sustaining growth and creating more jobs will depend on strong human capital – a workforce with solid foundational skills in literacy and numeracy,” Zafer Mustafaoglu, World Bank division director for the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, said.