EQRA

Project Info and Key Achievements

Objective: To increase equitable access to primary and secondary education,
particularly for girls, in selected lagging provinces, and to improve learning
conditions in Afghanistan.
Line Ministry MoEd and MRRD Key Achievements To Date
Grant $298m
(ARTF/IDA) $100m ARTF o School Construction (MRRD):
/$100m IDA/$98m GPE
Completion Phases Updated numbers as of
October 2019
Disb. Ratio: 26%
Planned construction 2,647
Timeline Sep 2018 - Dec 2023 sites
Ongoing construction 1,178
DO/IS/Risk MS/MS/S (Sep 2019) sites (44.5% of total planned)
Progress status: 1-25% 356
CPPR Advice INITIATE IMPLEMENTATION
Implementation manuals are Progress status: 26- 330
(Mar 2019) readiness conditions and not 50%
completed yet. Issues around CCAP Progress status: 51- 382
pose risk to the school construction 75%
component. Potential scale-up.
High-Risk/High Profile (HR/HP) o Soft-components
Progress(MoE): All activities will comments
status: 76- 110 in 2020
100%
onwards except procurement of firms for data collection
 EQRA
Progress Against PDO Indicators

Equitable Access to General Education

PDO-level Indicators Baseline Previous CURRENT Target

Students attending school regularly in selected 4,318,473 NA NA 5,018,429

provinces (Dec-2016) (Jan-2019) (Jul-2019) (Dec-2023)
Students attending school regularly in selected 1,616,799 NA NA 1,918,919
provinces, female (Dec-2016) (Jan-2019) (Jul-2019) (Dec-2023)
Out of school children in selected provinces 2,289,880 NA NA 1,089,880
(Dec-2016) (Jan-2019) (Jul-2019) (Dec-2023)
Out of school children in selected provinces, female 1,387,717 NA NA 643,029
(Dec-2016) (Jan-2019) (Jul-2019) (Dec-2023)

Improve learning conditions

Teachers meeting subject specific qualifications 52 NA NA 72
(Percentage) (Jun-2018) (Jan-2019) (Jul-2019) (Dec-2023)
 EQRA
Major Bottlenecks and Asks (from gov/WB)
Issue 1. Slow progress in completion of schools - more than 50% of ongoing projects are below 50% of physical progress,
making it difficult for MRRD to meet the disbursement conditions this year. MRRD also needs to speed up the recruitment of
engineers to strengthen the supervision.

Action/Ask: MRRD is conducting an analysis of reasons for the slow progress. MRRD is also proposing to combine NCB
projects with CDC-led construction. The proposal is being reviewed by the Bank to gauge its legal and financial implications.
Issue 2. Due to slow progress on finalizing the implementation manuals for the soft components of the project, MOE has not
been able to commence certain activities. Especially, the lagging component is Teacher Training. However, work towards
achieving the DLIs for 2019 is largely on track.

Action/Ask: Reiterate the importance of the foundational work to MOE.

Issue 3. The recruitment of TVPA by MOF has been delayed significantly. The TPVA should have been hired within 6 months of
the project effectiveness (by June 2019) as per the legal covenant. The TPVA recruitment has been shifted to 5 different
directorates within MOF, and the procurement process (REOI announcement) just started on October 16.

Action/Ask: A high level attention by MOF is needed to expedite the recruitment process.