Turkey - Secondary Education Project

Report No. PID10659 Project Name Turkey-Secondary Education Region Europe and Central Asia Region Sector Secondary Education Project ID TRPE66149 Borrower(s) REPUBLIC OF TURKEY Implementing Agency Address MINISTRY OF NATIONAL EDUCATION Address: M.E.B. Mustesarlik, 06648 Bakanliklar, Ankara, Turkey Contact Person: Ibrahim Barbaros, Deputy Undersecretary; Mehmet Temel, Deputy Undersecretary Tel: (90-312) 418-6979/ (90 312) 4256562 Fax: (90-312) 425-3315/ (90 312) 418-1096 Email: barbaros@meb.gov.tr/temel@meb.gov.tr Environment Category B Date PID Prepared September 13, 2001 Projected Appraisal Date October 29, 2001 Projected Board Date July 2, 2002 1. Country and Sector Background MAIN SECTOR ISSUESGiven its increasing working age population, Turkey has inadequate economic growth and job creation. It has high income inequality. Education can help solve these problems.GDP Growth. Average annual GDP growth was 4.5 percent between 1981-97. Although respectable, this growth rate was insufficient to generate jobs at rates commensurate with the growth of the working age population--especially jobs in high productivity sectors that are associated with higher wages. Annual growth in value added per worker has been low. Between 1989 and 1997 Turkey's working age population (15-64 year olds) increased a total of 24 percent, or an average of 3.4 percent per year. Employment of this age group steadily declined from 69 to 50 percent between 1975 and 1997, primarily because women were dropping out of the labor force and people were staying in school longer. Increasing educational levels for women and declining fertility rates are expected to translate soon into increases in women's attempts to enter the market. Over the last two decades one source of productivity growth, intersectoral shifts of capital and labor from low to high value-added sectors, has been strong, although analyses suggest that these shifts could have been greater. However, investment rates and productivity growth within sectors have been low, especially in agriculture where 40 percent of the labor force is employed and in services. These low investment and intra-sectoral productivity growth rates have slowed GDP growth and employment creation. Low investment rates and the consequent slow rate of accumulation of physical capital reflect the high real interest rates and high inflation rates driven by unsustainably high public sector borrowing. The implications of these points for education are that future workers need the skills and knowledge  required for greater intrasectoral productivity growth, increased labor mobility from lower to higher productivity sectors, and a Turkish economy more competitive with the European Union, other OECD countries, and Turkey' s global trading partners. Improving workers' productivity puts a premium on information processing and problem solving skills. Income inequality. Turkey has high income inequality, close to the levels for Russia or Peru. The poorest 20 percent command less than 5 percent of total income; the wealthiest 20 percent, 53 percent of total income. Differences in education account for as much as 22 percent of total income inequality between households, revealing the existence of entrenched inequities in access to education in Turkey. Returns to education appear to be much higher for younger than for older cohorts, a pattern associated with economies that are increasingly integrating into the global economy. Rural/urban differences and regional differences account for an additional 10 percent and 11 percent of income inequality, respectively. Poorer provinces have lower productivity within agriculture than richer provinces. Since agriculture accounts for high shares of output and employment in these provinces, this sector's sluggish performance keeps these provinces poor and their overall growth rates low. Education is the strongest predictor of poverty. Although households headed by an illiterate adult constitute only 14 percent of all households, such households account for about a third of all poor households. The average income of adults with higher education is almost six times that of illiterate adults. These points underline the importance of targeting students from families that are poor, families where the adults have low levels of education, families in rural areas, and families in the poorer provinces. For example, the poorer provinces in the East and Southeast lagged far behind the rest of the country in educational attainment, with almost half of girls dropping out before completion of fifth grade in some provinces.Educational status. Educational attainment of Turkey's population and labor force is by far the lowest of all the OECD countries. In 1998, virtually all children in other OECD countries had completed at least eight years of schooling, and in nearly two-thirds of these countries, over 70 percent or more of 25-29 year olds had completed upper secondary education. OECD analyses show that completing upper secondary education is a strong predictor of the acquisition of the information processing skills required to function in the new knowledge economy. In Turkey, however, fewer than 90 percent of children have completed the first five years of schooling. Of those students that did complete the first five years, 45 percent--mostly girls--did not pursue further education. Only 53 percent of the 6-8 grade age group attended school. In 1998, just 18 percent of Turkey's labor force (ages 25-64) had completed at least an upper secondary education, versus an average of 61 percent across all the OECD countries. While this percentage increases to 26 percent for the 25-29 year-old population, the gap between this figure and the OECD average for this age group--72 percent--actually increases. Similarly large gaps appear at the tertiary level, with only seven percent of young people (aged 30-34) attaining this level, compared to an average of 24 percent for the OECD countries.Turkey has mobilized nationally to improve the educational qualifications of its population. The Basic Education Law (No. 4306), adopted by Turkey's Parliament in August 1997, extends the period of compulsory basic education from five years to eight years and raises new tax revenues to finance a vast expansion of education infrastructure to accommodate the expected increase in basic education enrollments. Dropouts within the eight-year basic education cycle were -2 -  proscribed. Prior to adoption of the new Law, most children started school and completed five years of schooling, but 45 percent dropped out at the completion of grade five. Part of the reason for the high drop-out rate at this level was that village schools typically provide only the first five grades of schooling. In order to continue schooling beyond grade five, most rural children either had to commute to a middle school (grades 6 through 8) in a nearby town, or attend a boarding school. The compulsory extension of basic education began to take effect in September, 1998, when all children who had completed grade five in the prior school year were required to enroll in grade six. In the following two years, progression from grade six to grade seven, and from grade seven to grade eight became compulsory. The net enrollment ratio increased very sharply following passage of the Law, from 75.8 percent in 1996/97 to 91.1 percent in 1999/00. There are few cases of such rapid enrollment gains in the history of any national education system. Turkey's success in raising enrollments at the basic educations level will lead to a sharp increase in the number of students entering secondary education (grades 9 through 12). In five years, Government expects to increase the length of compulsory education to 12 years. The Government of Turkey recognizes that it faces short-term pressures and a longer-term opportunity at the secondary level. Increased enrollment rates in basic education are translating into higher enrollment rates at the secondary level. If the duration of secondary education is assumed to become four years in 2002-03, Government is under short-term pressure to increase secondary capacity by almost three million additional places by 2005-06, relative to the number of places in 2000-01.Simultaneous with this expansion, the Government of Turkey wishes to align the quality of its secondary programs with those of the European Union in preparation for greater integration with Europe and in response to an expected increase in the demand for higher level skills within Turkey and in Europe. The proposed reform of secondary education is intended to meet these challenges and give secondary education graduates a platform for lifelong learning.A key requirement of a reformed secondary system will be that it allows students the flexibility to move between programs and schools in accordance with their interests, aptitudes and progress. The current system has a variety of programs and schools, offering a wide range of tracks within general and vocational education and training (VET). However, it is horizontally and vertically inflexible. Students cannot move between tracks. A student who begins in one track is destined to remain there regardless of his/her progress or interests, or the quality of the program. The only alternative is dropping out. Students in vocational tracks have very restricted access to tertiary education programs and are denied access to universities. Compounding the costs of inflexibility is the fact that the quality and relevance of the programs are often poor. For example, in the general education track, students are prepared for entry into higher education, making this track much more popular than the vocational tracks. However, the result is large numbers of disappointed students because demand for higher education greatly outstrips supply. The skills and knowledge acquired by those who fail to get into higher education are not suitable for rapid assimilation into the labor market. The vocational tracks are often terminal programs with very narrow curricula, equipping students at best with skills for a very specific job. Even where the skills provided are relevant for the intended job, the highly restricted access to post-secondary programs means that graduates do not have the ability to upgrade and improve their skills as the labor market changes, - 3-  the requirements of the job shift, and/or their interests evolve. Private sector. Currently, private enrollments constitute only a very small fraction of total enrollments at the secondary level: less than five percent, and even lower in the VET track. The pattern is the same at the tertiary level. Given the high demand for education, these figures suggest that there are significant constraints on the private sector's ability to establish and run schools. GOVERNMENT STRATEGYTurkey's Eighth Five Year Development Plan specifies the long run goal of increasing compulsory education to 12 years. It indicates that 35 percent of the graduates from basic education will be "directed to general secondary education and 65 percent to vocational and technical secondary education". The Government's recent Secondary Education Development Project Preparatory Document specified certain targets for the reform of secondary education:Enrolling 95 percent of basic education graduates in secondary education starting in the 2001 academic year (the actual figure was 92 percent); Reversing current enrollment shares of 62 percent in general secondary education and 38 percent in vocational and technical secondary education to percentages of 35 and 65, respectively, by the 2005-2006 academic year; andIncreasing compulsory education from 8 to 11/12 years (to be determined) and the length of compulsory secondary education to 3/4 years (to be determined).To achieve these targets, the Government anticipates reforming secondary education in the following ways:creating a multi-purposed flexible structure that uses resources efficiently; as part of the process of greater integration with Europe, using international standards to structure the content of general and vocational/technical secondary education programs;to help achieve 95 percent secondary enrollment goals, providing social assistance, including scholarships, to poorer students to cover the costs of books, supplies, clothing, transportation, and food;to encourage the enrollment of 65 percent of secondary education students in vocational/technical secondary programs:a. providing efficient guidance and orientation services;b. giving access of graduates from vocational/technical secondary programs to higher education opportunities in related fields;c. supplying low interest credits with easy repayment conditions, some incentives, and exemptions for graduates of vocational/technical secondary education; andd. on the basis of the "Law on National Profession Standards", creating a system of national professional standards and certification to strengthen the relationship between vocational education programs and employers.The Government's Secondary Education Development Project Preparatory Document shows the resource requirements of its targets. By 2005-06 these include: almost three million additional secondary school places; quadruple the number of secondary general schools and almost ten times the number of vocational/technical schools; and 98,000 additional teachers and 5,000 additional non-teaching staff. Construction and equipment costs of the reform total between US$12 and $13 billion, with estimated annual maintenance costs for additional facilities of US$220 million. Curricular revision, publishing new textbooks, and retraining teachers are additional, but much smaller, cost items. Teaching and non-teaching staff carry an annual recurrent cost by 2005-06 of almost US$1.5 billion. 2. Objectives Improve access to high quality and economically relevant secondary education on an equitable basis. 3. Rationale for Bank's Involvement -4-  The Bank brings two key elements: experience of working in the sector and related sectors, and knowledge of directly relevant international experience. The Bank has been working with the MONE and other stakeholders on updating occupational standards to meet international expectations and improving the capacity of training institutions. Currently, the Bank has a large project in basic education. These projects are directly relevant to the proposed project in secondary education (see Lessons Learned) and have established a strong working relationship with the MONE. The members of the Bank team have a long and highly relevant experience in OECD countries, to which the Government of Turkey looks. The Bank is the only major development partner with both expertise and investment capacity in this sector. Initial discussions with the European Union, which is financing a project of roughly [30 percent] the size of the proposed loan in part of the sector, have identified a coincidence of outlook and approach to the sector. 4. Description The components described below are the same as the priority areas defined by the MONE for its secondary education reform program. During the course of the preparation mission, discussions will be held with Government to come to agreement on how best to make use of the Bank funds, and which component areas will be supported by the proposed project. The costs shown in the table below are indicative only, and will be discussed and refined, and agreed with Government, during the preparation mission. l.School Rehabilitation/Construction. To increase the number of school places, in response to increasing secondary enrollment rates, selected schools will be rehabilitated and constructed, based on criteria determined by MONE. 2.Restructuring Secondary School Program. Reform of secondary curricula. 3.Evaluation and MIS (including examinations, assessment and education indicators). Development of standard measures for students, teachers, and Government policymakers and stakeholders, and supporting databases. 4.School improvement component. This component will provide opportunities for schools (in cooperation with local communities) to to prepare, implement, monitor and evaluate their own school improvement project based on local needs and priorities. 5. Strengthening of school management/Institutions. Support to improving the management skills of school principals. Support to MONE to strengthen its capacity to carry out the secondary education reform. 6. Pre-service and in-service training for teachers. Includes all teachers, administrators, other staff (librarians), and will cover new teaching methologies, communication skills, program development, total quality management. 7. Provision of educational materials and IT equipment. Component includes equipment of ICD classrooms and libraries with internet access, PCs for teachers and school administrations and students, TVs, videos, digital cameras. -5-  Provision of educational materials and IT equipment 8. Career guidance and counseling. This component aims to create a guidance system that will help secondary students gain a better understanding of their own strenghts and give information about occupational and educational aereas. 5. Financing Total ( US$m) IBRD 175.00 Total Project Cost 250 6. Implementation The project is to be implemented over a four year period, beginning in September 2002. The proposed Closing Date is August 31, 2006. The implementing agency for the project will be the Ministry of National Education (MONE) for both the central and provincial administration levels. Overall management of project implementation at the central level will be carried out under the direct responsibility of a MONE Undersecretary. This Undersecretary will also head a Project Steering Committee composed of the Ministry leaders for each of the project components. Parliament passed a law in June, 2001, that established a Stakeholder Advisory Board that will provide policy oversight and political support for the reform.A Project Management Unit (PMU) will be established under the authority of the MONE. The functions of the PMU will be to ensure effective administration and coordination of the overall project program, financial accounts and procurement. The Project Management component will finance assistance to: (i) coordinate overall project execution; (ii) procure all project-financed civil works, goods and services; (iii) operate the financial management system according to Bank requirements; and (iv) act as a technical liaison between the Government and the Bank on all matters relating to the project. The actual implementation of the components will be carried out by the relevant unit/s within the MONE. The PMU will comprise: a Project Director and technical staff, including two financial officers and three procurement officers whose selections will be based on relevant skills and experience in their areas of expertise. In addition, an administrative assistant will be hired to support the Project Director and the PMU. An internationally recruited procurement consultant will be hired during the initial phases of the project to assist the PMU in establishing and maintaining an effective procurement system for the project. 7. Sustainability Government's secondary education reform--and the Project's role in that reform--raise several sustainability issues. The questions most relevant to the project are questions (a) and (b).a. Is the reform sustainable in the sense that the Government is able to identify appropriate models and "go to scale" while responding to the immediate demand for places, without a formal piloting phase?b. Are schools targeted in the initial phase able to sustain programmatic and quality improvements?c. Are schools to which the reform is extended in subsequent phases able to institutionalize the programmatic and quality improvements associated with the reform?d. Is the schedule for expanding the provision of reformed secondary educational - 6 -  services fiscally sustainable, given Turkey's macroeconomic situation and expenditure priorities? These questions cannot be properly evaluated until the project has been further prepared. For example, the answer to the first question will be affected by the MONE's progress in resolving the organizational fragmentation that afflicts secondary education. The answers to the second and third questions require an evaluation of the management capacities of the pilot and non-pilot schools. The answer to the fourth question requires a clearer schedule for extending the secondary reform and the economic analyses specified in section E.1. 8. Lessons learned from past operations in the country/sector Unlike other ECA countries, the Bank has significant lending experience with the Government of Turkey (GOT) for the education sector and thus a rich archive of lessons to use. Some of the same problems re-surface again and again across projects. The fundamental message of prior projects is that neither the Borrower nor the Bank can assume away constraints. They re-emerge and threaten the achievement of Government and Bank objectives, regardless of the specific project. Unless the Secondary Education Project (SEP) can find ways to design around, significantly mitigate, or solve key constraints, the Bank has no business lending. The poor, not just the rich, have to repay the loans to Turkey. It is incumbent to assure that a loan has a reasonable chance of resulting in positive change.l. Institutional issues. Institutional barriers have dogged earlier projects. The recommendation of earlier projects is to get the legal base in place and implemented for dealing with these barriers prior to project launch.The key players that are required to take actions important to achieving project objectives have to "own" their actions. In past projects, lack of ownership resulted in serious project implementation delays. However, to "own" the action, players have to participate in planning, trying, evaluating, modifying. The organizational structure in the MONE makes meeting this need difficult. It requires moving from an order-giver/order-taker organization of work to one where authorities and responsibilities are delegated downwards, with accountabilities for performance. For example, any secondary reform ultimately succeeds or fails at the level of the school and the classroom. However, school managers are not selected for their leadership or managerial skills. They tend to stagnate in their positions without being expected to update their managerial and pedagogic skills and knowledge. They have little incentive to show initiative or to provide incentives for teachers. They lack outreach skills to interact with the community and local businesses; An earlier project on work-based apprenticeship tried to contain fragmented secondary vocational education programs that mirrored the fragmented organizational structure for secondary VET in the MONE. This structure has begun to change, potentially removing a key hurdle; Multiple types of secondary schools and programs are embedded in law, making experimentation and reform difficult; andThe Board of Education remains a significant barrier to increasing the quality of curricula and textbooks and the efficiency of the textbook procurement and distribution process.2. Capacity issues. Central level staff with relatively limited experience in working with consultants and language barriers make it difficult for the MONE to benefit even from technical assistance that is relevant and of high quality. Several projects noted that that it was hard to form effective partnerships between MONE officials and national/ international consultants because of large gaps between the two groups in qualifications and incomes and, in the the case - 7 -  of international consultants, language skills. Language barriers also affected the ability of MONE staff to participate in foreign training, and efforts to reduce these barriers prior to training were not successful.3. Programmatic issues. Many of the policies that structure the current VET system date back to the 1940s and need to be modernized. The laws underlying types of programs and the Ministry's organizational structure for managing VET encourage narrow vocational specializations decreasingly relevant to the job market and a pedagogy poorly designed to develop the skills needed in modern workplaces--critical thinking, analytical and problem solving skills, higher order language skills, math and science knowledge, computer technology skills, and communication skills; andIT procurements need to include a margin for unforeseen technical innovations or upgrades in order to keep software and hardware at a 'state of the art' level.4. Project management issues. Past projects identified a number of lessons for project management to reduce implementation delays and increase the chances of achieving project objectives.Projects need to be shorter with a limited number of components. For example, the National Education Development Project had a nine year implementation period, including 2.5 years of extensions. A detailed implementation plan (project operational manual) with clearly specified short-term targets and milestones must be prepared prior to project effectiveness to give implementation guidance to the PIU and the MONE units responsibile for implementing project components. Neither of the Bank's last two projects had a POM, a lack that seemed to contribute to implementation delays.. TORs, bidding documents, and the MOF "visa" for any technical assistance contracts for the first year of the project must be in place before Board or project effectiveness. Under the National Education Development Project it took the MONE two years to sign the technical assistance contract; the YOK, the higher education implementing agency, four years. Technical assistance has too often been ineffective for reasons other than client capacity shortfalls. TORs have been ill-defined and not well targeted on appropriate tasks, and the Borrower did not proactively monitor consultants' work, inputs and products.During project preparation, agreement between the Government and the World Bank needs to be reached on how to ensure competent and transparent project management. The MONE has been reluctant to contract for national fixed-term or consultant staff for PMU positions, preferring to assign teachers with weak or irrelevant qualifications and poor language skills. For example, the Borrower seconded teachers to perform procurement functions for the Basic Education Project . Using loan funds to create efficient project management and implementation still remains controversial for both Treasury and MONE because civil servants have low salaries and limited internal travel budgets. However, project management staff must be selected according to strict criteria relevant to those functions that they will be expected to perform, such as PMU director, procurement, and financial management. Resources should be provided within the project for on-going training of these staff, especially for procurement. The procurement performance of the MONE under the Basic Education Project is sufficiently in question that an international procurement specialist should be contracted to work with the procurement staff of the PMU for the SEP for a period of the first two years of the project. The history of past projects indicates that they require tight supervision. Thorough, periodic assessments more frequent than a mid-term review should occur to assess the sustained validity of the project design and to evaluate implementation progress.5. Dilution of effort. MONE - 8 -  tends to "spread" the wealth of training, fellowship, and study tour resources by increasing the numbers that participate and shortening the duration of the intended training and study. 9. Program of Targeted Intervention (PTI) N 10. Environment Aspects (including any public consultation) Issues The first component of the project will support rehabilitation and extension of existing schools, and construction of new schools. Although it is estimated that the program will be large, no adverse environmental impact is anticipated, due to the dispersed nature of the physical infrastructure program. Under the current Basic Education Project, a handbook, entitled Handbook for Basic Education School Buildings was developed with Bank assistance during project preparation. This handbook, which codifies the environmental standards for safety, waste disposal, use of hazardous materials, aesthetics and other aspects of the school construction program, has been reviewed by the Bank under the Basic Education Project, Phase I, and found to be satisfactory. The Handbook will be updated to include the secondary education program. Because of the urgency of the physical infrastructure program, the needs for land acquisition and the possible resettlement implications will be thoroughly investigated during project preparation. 11. Contact Point: Task Manager Marit Ketilsson Granheim The World Bank 1818 H Street, NW Washington D.C. 20433 Telephone: 12. For information on other project related documents contact: The InfoShop The World Bank 1818 H Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20433 Telephone: (202) 458-5454 Fax: (202) 522-1500 Web: http:// www.worldbank.org/infoshop Note: This is information on an evolving project. Certain components may not be necessarily included in the final project. This PID was processed by the InfoShop during the week ending September 21, 2001. -9-