Pakistan’s Government and the World Bank signed a grant agreement that worth $19.85 million. This is entitled Covid-19 Response, Resilience, and Recovery for the Education Project; the grant aim and objective is to boost the education sector of Pakistan during the current second wave of coronavirus.
Noor Ahmed, the Secretary Ministry of Economic Affairs, signed the grant agreement recently on behalf of the Government of Pakistan. However, Najy Benhassine, the country director at The World Bank, signed this grant agreement on behalf of the World Bank. Makhdoom Khusro Bakhtyar, the Minister of Economic Affairs, was also present at the ceremony.
The project is also aimed at supporting and boosting the provincial and federal actions in the education sector to respond better and to recover from the Covid-19 pandemic crises in the short term. It aims to lay this foundation for the resilience to face all future crises and circumstances, with a focus on the disadvantaged areas.
The interventions of the projects will help the Government of Pakistan to ensure well learning continuity within the country through an expansion of national distance learning content. It will also help to understand the distribution of learning material in the lagging areas, also to protect the students’ and their teachers’ health for their safety and wellbeing.
Designing and implementing the distance learning competency standards is to promote safe schooling and also support teachers as well as students to prepare for the recovery through the delivery of all teachers training, and it will also help for better coordination across the provinces and in the overall country, Pakistan.
In the ceremony, Mr. Bakhtyar also thanked the World Bank country’s management for this agreement and for extending their support to Pakistan’s Government in its efforts to mainly overcome the Covid-19 pandemic issues, especially that are regarding the continuity of educational learning in the country. The World Bank also assured its continuous support to the Pakistani Government in achieving their priority development aims and objectives.
