To provide quality education in India, the World Bank said its board of executives has approved a new project worth $500 million in six Indian states.
The project, named STARS (Strengthening Teaching-Learning and Results for States Program), will be implemented through the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, in partnership with Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and Rajasthan.
The World Bank said “STARS will help improve learning assessment systems, strengthen classroom instruction and remediation, facilitate school-to-work transition, and strengthen governance and decentralized management.”
India made significant strides in improving access to education across the country; between 2004-05 and 2018-19, the number of children going to school increased from 219 million to 248 million.
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The STARS programme builds on the long partnership between India and the World Bank, since 1994, for strengthening public school education and to support the country’s goal of providing ‘Education for All’.
“The programme will support individualized, needs-based training for teachers that will give them an opportunity to have a say in shaping training programs and making them relevant to their teaching needs,” the World Bank said.
UNESCO had said that countries including India need to focus on inclusion of students from underprivileged background in crisis times like the current covid-19 pandemic.
