The quality education support programme (QESP) is conceptualised to support the implementation of Egypt’s “Pre-University Education National Strategic Plan 2007/8 – 2011/12” and to further strengthen the implementation of the Government’s decentralisation policy. The Ministry of Education (MoE) has proposed Assiut and Sohag as programme governorates.
The programme’s concept is based on the Ministry of Education’s explicit request to the KfW Development Bank to create a more comprehensive approach than in the past and to combine the provision of physical infrastructure (investment component) with a technical assistance component aiming to improve the quality of education as well as of the learning environment. Thus QESP has been developed by the MoE and the KfW Development Bank in cooperation with UNICEF to provide a holistic approach to prepare schools for quality accreditation, a main target of the national education strategy. The investment component of the programme aims at further extending and upgrading the physical infrastructure of formal primary education in a decentralised setting.
In general, the programme seeks to expand the access to child-friendly schools (CFS) and to improve the quality of primary education in the selected districts.