PROGRAM INFORMATION DOCUMENT (PID) CONCEPT STAGE Report No.: AB6959 Operation Name Second Education Development Policy Loan Region MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA Country Morocco Sector Primary education (75%); Secondary education (25%) Operation ID P120541 Lending Instrument Development Policy Lending Borrower(s) MOROCCO Implementing Agency Ministry of Education Rabat, Morocco Tel: (212-537) 771-822 Fax: (212-537) 771-874 elhayani@men.gov.ma Date PID Prepared April 9, 2012 Estimated Date of Appraisal October 1, 2012 Estimated Date of Board December 4, 2012 Approval Corporate Review Decision Following the corporate review, the decision was taken to proceed with the preparation of the operation. Key development issues and rationale for Bank involvement The “Arab Spring� has shown the powerful consequences of exclusion and high levels of youth unemployment in the MENA region. Low quality of education is one of the reasons explaining poor labor market outcomes. In the TIMSS 2007 Grade 8 mathematics survey, for example, 59 percent of Moroccan students did not even reach the lowest of four benchmark levels, while none at all reached the highest benchmark level; this compares with the international median of 25 percent not reaching even the lowest benchmark and 2 percent reaching the highest benchmark. The Country Partnership Strategy (2010-2013) places the employment challenge squarely at the center of Morocco’s development. Support to skills development is a key component of the Bank’s program and the Second Education DPL is a central instrument of the Bank’s lending support. The Education DPL series will contribute to achieving the first and second pillars of the CPS, namely: (i) encouraging growth, competitiveness and employment; and (ii) improving the quality of service delivery to citizens. Proposed Objective(s) The proposed program aims to support the implementation of the Government’s “Education Emergency Program 2009-2012� to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of service delivery and educational outcomes. In particular, the program aims to: (i) Improve physical and financial accessibility, and equity of basic education to all school-aged children; (ii) Improve education quality at all levels through foundation systems and strengthen capacity and empowerment at the school levels, in conjunction with an enhanced evaluation culture; and (iii) Improve institutional effectiveness and efficiency of public expenditures to improve the sustainability of the education sector. Preliminary Description The proposed program’s main policy areas, which reflect those of the Government’s Education Emergency Program 2009-2012, are as follows: I. Achieve universal compulsory basic education II. Improve system performance (teaching, management and stewardship) III. Mobilize and utilize resources (financing, partnership, communication, social mobilization and involvement of the private sector). The proposed operation would be the second in a programmatic series of two single-tranche DPLs. The overall program is designed to provide budget and technical support for the refinement and implementation of the national education sector reform program, and has been developed in close coordination with the Government to ensure full ownership of the processes, actions and outcomes. The First Education Development Policy Loan, which was approved by the Executive Board on June 8, 2010, became effective on August 9, 2010 and closed on March 31, 2011, supported key initial institutional and regulatory measures as well as the introduction of new approaches to improve service delivery effectiveness and efficiency. The proposed Second Education Development Policy Loan would support deepening institutional reforms and scaling up the program to tackle core cross-cutting issues. The prior actions for the Second Education Development Policy Loan are as follows:  The Government has agreed upon [[and implemented]] the following prior actions before the presentation of the Loan to the World Bank Executive Board:  The MOE develops and adopts new criteria for locating primary schools and colleges, with priority given to rural and semi-urban areas;  The MOE pilots, in at least four (4) communes in different AREFs, a global approach to providing support adapted to needs and aimed at encouraging demand for schooling in rural areas;  The MOE carries out, in collaboration with AREFs, regional student learning assessment activities;  The MOE develops and adopts competency guidelines for pre-service teacher education (pre- school/primary, lower secondary, and upper secondary education);  The MOE develops and adopts a mechanism for rationalizing human resource allocation in the schools sector (covering teacher redeployment, mobility and retention);  The MOE transfers to AREFs the responsibility for human resource management decisions that are not subject to the MEF’s prior review;  The MOE evaluates the results of, and draws lessons from, the first year of implementation of school charters and their funding, on the basis of a representative sample of schools; Each AREF establishes its own commitment accounting information system, enabling it to describe its budget commitments and track their use. Poverty and Social Impacts and Environment Aspects Poverty and Social Impacts Policies and interventions to be supported by the proposed program are largely pro-poor and promote equity. The program aims to improve physical and financial accessibility of basic education for all school-aged children in an equitable manner. The monitoring framework ensures that key indicators are tracked both by gender and by urban/rural location. The program is expected to improve the inclusiveness of the overall country’s economic and social development by providing the poor and the marginalized with the capacity to reap the benefits of economic opportunities. The execution of supply- and demand-side interventions would be driven by the need to narrow the gap between lagging and leading geographical regions (especially between urban, rural and semi-urban areas): (i) piloting of “community� schools in select remote areas and the provision of a complete schooling environment, including boarding facilities to primary school-aged children, under partnership arrangements with qualified NGOs; (ii) enhancement of demand-side actions (including the ongoing pilot CCT program to improve school retention in disadvantaged areas with a focus on girls), and the development of a more integrated strategy to ensure equal access to and retention in primary education; and (iii) focus on improving the learning conditions in existing pre-schools in rural areas to largely benefit poor households. Negative impacts are likely to be low. Through evaluation, the effectiveness and impacts of the different interventions being proposed will be assessed. Environment Aspects The Government’s school construction program lies outside the proposed program. The proposed operation is therefore not likely to have significant negative effects on the environment, forestry and other natural resources. In implementing the Government’s reforms, the Education Ministry intends to apply the “Environmental and Social Protection Framework�. The Framework aims to prevent, attenuate or compensate for a range of negative impacts that may arise from school construction: (i) damage to buildings caused by natural conditions (flooding, erosion, earthquakes, landslides, etc.); (ii) reduction in the quality of building use caused by social conditions (lack of hygiene, overcrowding); and (iii) damage caused by poor design, poor construction or poor usage (excessive felling of surrounding trees, incorrect management of waste water, etc.). At the same time, the Framework aims to ensure that: (i) the safety and security of buildings’ users are guaranteed; (ii) energy use is as efficient as possible; (iii) buildings are accessible to disabled users; (iv) sites are managed in ways that respect users’ and neighbors’ health and well-being (e.g., efficient water use, waste management, management of dangerous goods, proper use of safety equipment); and (v) all land acquired is suitable for school construction. The proper application of the Framework allows for the timely collection of information, the detection of environmental problems and the remediation of such problems. Tentative financing Source: ($m.) Borrower 0 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development 60 Total 60 Contact point World Bank Contact: Jeffrey Waite Title: Lead Education Specialist Tel: 212-537-636-050 Email: Jwaite@worldbank.org Location: Rabat, Morocco (IBRD) Borrower Contact: Abdelhaq El Hayani Title: Director, Strategy, Statistics & Planning (Ministry of Education) Email: elhayani@men.gov.ma For more information contact: The InfoShop The World Bank 1818 H Street, NW Washington, D.C. 20433 Telephone: (202) 458-4500 Fax: (202) 522-1500 Web: http://www.worldbank.org/infoshop