World Bank commits $125m for teacher development

The World Bank has set aside $125 million for programmes to motivate and attract teachers to the rural areas and enhance teacher development in Nigeria.

A World Bank Education Specialist, Mr Adebayo Solomon, told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday that the project would be implemented in such a way that the bank would give additional money to teachers who were willing to go to the rural communities to teach, depending on the area.

Solomon said that the project was currently ongoing in three states of Ekiti, Anambra and Bauchi and would span five years.

“The focus is to motivate and give incentives to teachers to enable them to go to rural communities and teach. The project will cost the bank 125 million dollars for three states for five years.

“The project is supported by the World Bank but implemented by the benefiting states in collaboration with the state Ministry of Education and State Universal Basic Education Boards,’’ he said.

Solomon said the ability of a state to articulate plans on moving education forward were criteria used in selecting the three states and the willingness to pay the counterpart fund.

“The states must be able to articulate what they want to do to move education to the next level to the satisfaction of the bank and also the commitment of states to give resource to fund education projects,” Solomon explained

He said that the ongoing project was a pilot scheme as there were plans to scale up the project, even in the Northeast, depending on the willingness of states to access support from the bank.

Solomon said that a monitoring mechanism, named “Independent Verifiers”, had been put in place to confirm and check the claims by states on what they had achieved with the money.

He also said that if the results of the verification were satisfactory, they would be reimbursed for sustainability