Burkina Faso - Primary Education Development Project

 Primary education development project Report No: ; Type: Report/Evaluation Memorandum ; Country: Burkina Faso; Region: Africa; Sector: Primary Education; Major Sector: Education; ProjectID: P000270 December 29, 1995 Burkina Faso: Primary Education Development Project (Credit 1598-BUR) The Burkina Faso Primary Education Development project (Credit 1598-BUR for US$21.6 million) was approved in FY85. The Implementation Completion Report (ICR) was prepared by the Africa Regional Office, and comments by the borrower are included in an Appendix. The Third Education project marked the beginning of cooperation between IDA and the borrower that gave high priority to primary education. Coinciding with the borrower's adoption of a structural adjustment program, the project focused on developing a financing strategy that would expand enrollment in primary education from a low 24 percent, improve quality and reduce unit costs. The project largely succeeded in meeting its main objectives, despite several adverse factors that delayed implementation-change of government, management inexperience, staff turn-over and consultant delays, institutional and procedural complexity and false starts on some components. The share of primary education in the government's education budget rose from 42.6 to 51 percent. Enrollments in primary education rose by 37 percent, with 40 percent more pupils in grade one and, overall, 5 percent more girls. Quality also improved, with 2,400 teachers trained, 2.3 million books supplied (many locally produced) and 450 classrooms and other amenities constructed. These achievements were accompanied by cost reductions that, according to the ICR, are durable, including efficiencies such as doubling the throughput of teachers trained, reducing teacher qualification/salary levels and slightly raising teacherstudent ratios while increasing student-classroom ratios through changes in school organization. In the late 1980s, this was a pioneering project in the education sector. It was flexible in moving from cost sharing with local governments (which proved inefficient) to considerable community participation, and it fully used the sizable program of technical assistance and fellowships for planning and management development. The Operations Evaluation Department (OED) concurs with the ratings for the project in the ICR. Outcome is rated as satisfactory and institutional development as modest. Sustainability is rated as likely because an ongoing project (Credit 2244) aims to sustain community participation and the primary education system has been responsive to parental demand. Bank performance is rated as satisfactory. An important lesson is that good project preparation and design and flexible responses during implementation to major exogenous events greatly increase the chance of successful results. Secondly, to ensure that services to be financed by users remain sustainable, they must be relevant and wanted. No audit is planned.