BusinessWorld | ADB lends $300M to support K to 12 programADB lends $300M to support K to 12 program
Fifty-nine students of a Grade 2 class, packed in small classroom at Commonwealth Elementary School in Quezon City, just one of the many public schools in the Philippines suffering from overcrowding. -- AFP
The Philippine government and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have signed a $300-million loan agreement to support the country’s implementation of the K to 12 program in its basic education curriculum, according to a document posted on the ADB Web site.
Finance Secretary Cesar V. Purisima and ADB Philippines Country Office Director Richard S.M. Bolt signed the loan agreement on Feb. 10 for the Senior High School Support Program.
The program, according to the loan agreement, has four expected outputs: an upgrade of the quality of the Department of Education’s (DepEd) Senior High School (SHS) Program, achieving a minimum service standard for school facilities, development and implementation of a voucher program and strengthening of DepEd’s basic education management.
The program is expected to be completed by Dec. 31, 2019. The loan principal will be repaid in 15 years starting 2020 while the interest rate was set at a 0.6% premium over the Intercontinental Exchange London Interbank Offered Rate, less 0.1%. A commitment charge of 0.15% will likewise be paid by the Philippines. Interest payments and amortization are on a semiannual basis.
ADB said in a statement in December that the loan’s beneficiaries will include around 5.9 million students expected to enter senior high school from June 2016 to April 2019, the early stages of the K to 12 system. “The reforms are expected to cost around $4.4 billion from 2015 to 2019. ADB’s program will support selected elements of those reforms, including the development of new senior high school curricula for mathematics, science, and technical and vocational training programs,” ADB said at the time.
“Assistance will also be given to build classrooms, to engage and train up to 84,000 teachers, and to develop and introduce a voucher system to help cover tuition fees for an estimated 800,000 senior high school students each year,” it added.
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