PROJECT BRIEF  BACKGROUND: Turkey has recognized the need to raise the educational qualifications of the population. Turkey also recognizes that the most urgent priority is to increase the coverage of education at the foundation of the education pyramid to assure that all children have a basic education. In August 1997, Parliament approved a new Basic Education Law which extends the duration of compulsory schooling from five years to eight years and provides for improved quality and relevance of basic education. To support this initiative further, the Government requested large-scale support from the World Bank in November 1997. The Bank’s Board approved the first of two Adaptable Program Loans (APLs) of USD300 million each on June 25, 1998, to support the implementation of the Basic Education Program. After four years of implementation of first APL, in July 26, 2002, the Bank’s Board approved the second APL of USD300 million to continue to support Government’s Basic Education Program. This second phase of the program is also referred to as the Second Basic Education Project (BEP 2). PROJECT OBJECTIVE: The objective of the second APL is to support implementation of the Government’s Basic Education Program by extending the actions supported under the first APL, by supporting the development of preschool education as an integral part of basic education, and expanding special needs education. PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The second phase of the APL will help finance the following subset of Government’s Program: a) ICT hardware, software for approximately 4002 additional basic education schools throughout Turkey;
b) refurbishment of about 500 rural-, bussing-, regional boarding-, and part-time boarding schools, as well as renovation and extension of 430 bussing schools and schools in low-income areas around large cities (gecekondu areas);
c) provision of educational materials to about 4,000 additional basic education schools;
d) further in-service training of basic education teachers and inspectors;
e) construction and furnishing for 300 new preschool classrooms at existing basic education schools, educational materials and training to develop preschool education as an integral part of basic education;
f) rehabilitation, extension and furnishing of 20 schools for children with special needs, as well as educational materials and training to develop education for children with special needs and to integrate it more within basic education;
g) extension of the Mother and Child Development Program form 59 provinces to 81 provinces;
h)Â continued support for Program implementation, and (i) continued monitoring and evaluation of the Program.
IMPLEMENTING and MONITORING: The loan would support studies and other actions to assess the outcomes of the Program against several categories of performance indicators, and to provide continuous feedback to Program management to improve the effectiveness of the Program. BENEFITS: The direct beneficiaries are expected to be the basic education students, preschool students, and students with special needs who will benefit from better education materials, more motivated and more qualified teachers, and less crowded classrooms. Teachers, inspectors, and ICT trainers (formators) will also benefit from the improved training and incentives. Indirect beneficiaries of the Project include the parents, especially mothers of children who are better equipped to provide for their children’s health, education, and nutritional needs because of the Mother and Child Development Program which will be implemented in 81 provinces of Turkey by Loan financing. The Project targets regions and groups with the lowest school attendance and educational performance in basic education – in particular, girls in the Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia, and children from poor gecekondu households. Provincial education administrations also benefit from strengthened capacity to diagnose, implement and manage programs to meet their needs. PROJECT STATUS: Project was declared effective on October 23, 2002.  Implementation has been problematic from the start, starting with a decision by Government not to provide any counterpart funding in 2003, and little actual progress in 2004 as the Project team changed several times. Since 2005, the Ministry of National Education is giving the project a higher priority, and the World Bank helped by agreeing to a substantial restructuring of the project design in order to allow the Ministry to delegate a substantial share of contracting and project execution to provincial education departments. There is a progress in the implementation and consequent loan disbursement. The Project closing date is extended by one year and now scheduled to close on February 28, 2007. Please click here for PROJECT DOCUMENTS.
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