This is a short summary of the Implementation Completion Report (ICR) of a recently-closed World Bank project. The full text of the ICR is available on the Bank’s website. To access this document, go to www.worldbank.org/reference/ and then opt for the Documents & Reports section.

Elementary Education Project

Approval Date: 20 April 2004 Closing Date: 31 December 2007 Total Project Cost: US$M 7786.8 Bank Financing: US$M 488.7 Implementing Agency: Ministry of Human Resource Development Outcome:  Satisfactory Risk to Developement Outcome:  Substantial Overall Bank Performance:  Satisfactory Overall Borrower Performance:  Satisfactory

Context
India, a country of over a billion people with a per capita GDP of about $515 in 2003, had made remarkable progress in poverty alleviation and education. Poverty incidence had declined from 45 percent in the 1980s to 26 percent in the early 2000s. Between 1992-93 and 1998-99, net enrollments of primary school age children (6 to 10-yearolds) had increased from 68 to 82 percent across the nation, with most of the enrollment expansion attributable to improved access, especially for girls and rural children.

Despite the remarkable achievements, India still accounted for one-quarter of the world’s 104 million out-of-school children. According to Ministry of Human Resource  Development (MHRD) statistics, the Grade 5 completion rate was under 70 percent nationwide. Wideranging  disparities across states and districts meant that, for example, the net primary enrollment ratios ranged from 63 percent in Bihar to 98 percent in Kerala.

Reflecting its deep commitment to universalizing access to and completion of elementary education of satisfactory quality by 2010, the Government of India (GOI) launched the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the National Program for Universal Elementary Education (UEE).

Source: NSS data various rounds

The rationale for external support to SSA was thus compelling. The project pioneered the sector-wide approach (SWAp) in India, in the hope that it would provide a model for more effective development assistance not only for education, but also for other sectors in the country.

Project Development Objectives
The Project’s objective was to assist theGOI’s ongoing Program for UniversalElementary Education (SSA) that aimed atachieving universal enrollment andcompletion of elementary education ofsatisfactory quality by 2010, through

• increasing enrollment and reducing the number of out of school children;
• narrowing existing gender and social gaps; and
• enhancing the quality of education of all the elementary school students.

• To move towards Universal Elementary Education:
  - Establishment, construction and extension of primary and upper primary schools;
  - Provision of training in social mobilization and educational management;
  - Payment of the salaries of teachers hired under the program;
  - Interventions to enroll out-of-school children.
  
  
• To narrow existing gender and social gaps:
  - Provision of free school textbooks to girls and students from SCs and STs;
  - Special schools and facilities for girls, including residential schools and toilets;
  - Hiring of female teachers to aim at parity with male teachers;
  - Provision of grants to districts to support students with disability.
  
  
• To improve quality:
  - Provision of training for new and continuing teachers;
  - School grants for repair and maintenance, and for materials and equipment;
  - Teacher grants for teaching and learning materials;
  - Establishment and building of Block and Cluster Resource Centers; and
  - Innovative activities.

According to the Census data, the number of out-of-school children have fallen to 7 million as ofOctober 2006

• To reduce out-of-school children and increase enrollment:
  According to the baseline MHRD householdchild census of January 2003, there were25 million children aged 6-14 years out ofmainstream and alternative schools(Education Guarantee Scheme, or EGS,and Alternative and Innovative Education,or AIE, centers). The updated householdcensuses report an annual decline from thisbaseline, with the number of out-of-schoolchildren reported to have fallen to 7 millionas of October 2006. However, bothadministrative as well as independenthousehold surveys suggest that the targetof annual reduction of 3 million a year hasbeen exceeded. As the number of childrenout of school fell, enrollments increased.Enrollments increased faster than the growthin the school age population, as a result ofwhich the Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) in primary increased from 98.8 percent to 119.2 percent and Net Enrollment Ratio (NER) from 81.5 percent to 88.8 percent between 2000 and 2005.
  
  The NSS data confirm the tremendous progress in increasing participation during the first phase of SSA. The most significant contributions likely came from the opening of new schools and EGS centers, awareness campaigns to mobilize communities, backto-school camps and residential and nonresidential bridge programs, expansion of existing schools and improvements in physical infrastructure, and the hiring of teachers. Under SSA, progress in reducing out-of-school children in the nine lagging states also accelerated which received the majority of funds under SSA, and contributed to more than half of the decline in children not participating in schools.
  
  
• To narrow existing gender and socialgaps:
  Trends from school-based data suggest that parity of girls with boys and of scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) children with other children has been achieved in primary education. The share of girls in primary enrollment in 2005-06 was 47.8 percent, practically equal to their share in primary school age population (48 percent). In the case of SC and ST children, their shares in 2005-06 were 18.95 percent and 9.56 percent, higher than their shares in the primary school age population of 17.6 percent and 9.3 percent respectively.
  
  For SC children, the social parity ratio (with“others”) among primary age children increased from 0.85 to 0.91 between 2000 and 2005 (NSS data), reflecting substantial narrowing of gaps by 2005. For ST children, the social parity ratio improved from 0.77 to 0.87 for primary age children, once again reflecting tremendous progress in narrowing gaps.
  
  The NSS data also confirm substantial narrowing of gender and social gaps in upper primary between 2000 and 2005, but suggest a still unfinished agenda here.
  
  

• The NSS data show substantial narrowing of gender and social gaps in upper primary between 2000 and 2005, but suggest a still unfinished agenda

  To enhance the quality of education for all children:
  Despite observed improvements in most input and outcomes indicators of quality, the still low learning levels, and still high teacher and particularly student absenteeism (more so in some states, e.g. Bihar), show the challenges ahead. Improving learning of children will require changes in classroom processes and interactions. This needs, for example, in addition to the recruitment and training of teachers and establishment of academic support, to ensuring effectiveness of the training and academic support. It will also need a greater role of communities in supporting quality improvements.
  
  SSA is now emphasizing, for example, the state level development of performance standards for teachers and academic support institutions, and improved learning outcomes. However, such changes will take time, and will only yield results in the medium and longer term.
  

Lessons Learnt

• A Centrally Sponsored Scheme like SSA can provide a powerful vehicle to mobilize ownership and commitment of stakeholders at all levels to a common mission.
• Flexibility to support differentiated needs is central to addressing the challenges in diverse local contexts.
• The strong focus on equity in program design has facilitated narrowing of gaps at primary, but access and equity concerns for the hardest to reach, particularly in upper primary, need to be addressed.
• Enhancing quality requires sufficient focus on classroom processes and on learning outcomes, and takes time.
• Strengthening the role of local bodies in school management can lead to improved outcomes, but furthering decentralization requires considerable efforts at capacity building at all levels – and particularly at village and community levels – to support quality.
• Partnerships with local body and private aided schools are encouraged under SSA while the growth of the unaided private sector in urban areas suggests potential gains from carefully designed partnerships with this sector as well.
• Greater use of data in planning and monitoring further improves their reliability and usefulness; there is now need to ensure capacity to generate and use reliable information on student learning and to evaluate the impact of interventions.
• The SWAp, pioneered under SSA, has facilitated partner harmonization, strengthened sectoral management capacity, and reduced transactions costs.