ADB Provides over 1M Textbooks to Senior Secondary Schools across Aceh and Nias

MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is providing more than one million textbooks to senior secondary schools across Indonesia’s Aceh province and Nias island as part of ADB’s Grant for the Earthquake and Tsunami Emergency Support Project (ETESP).

Support for practical science and information communication technology education in senior secondary schools is the focus of the education component of the ETESP grant. The textbooks on biology, chemistry, physics, information and communication technology, English and mathematics will replace outdated editions and replenish chronic shortages of the new 2006 curriculum textbooks being introduced to the schools this year.

The Aceh-Nias Rehabilitation and Rehabilitation Agency (BRR) is implementing the education component, which will give more than 100,000 senior secondary students at 395 schools access to the 1.39 million new textbooks.

Shireen Lateef, ADB’s Director of Social Services Sector Division of the Southeast Asian Regional Department, and Cut Cayarani Bitai, BRR’s Deputy of Social Services, attended a ceremony to mark delivery of the teaching and learning materials at Senior High School SMA-N 5 in Banda Aceh on Monday, 12 November.

“We are working closely with the Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Agency for Aceh and Nias and the provincial and district education and religious affairs authorities to restore and improve the education standards,” Ms. Lateef said during the ceremony.

Representatives from the target schools and the districts’ teachers association selected the textbooks at five book fairs in Aceh and Nias between August 2006 and November 2007.

“There has been a delay in the distribution of the books because of the introduction of a new curriculum in 2006 and by ADB and BRR’s decision to double the level of their support to cover at least 90% of schools in Aceh and Nias,” said Ms. Bitai.

ETESP’s $16 million grant for the education component also includes upgrading libraries for all 395 schools and the construction and equipping of laboratories for practical science and computing for 50 schools.

ADB's multi-sector support to earthquake and tsunami affected areas in Aceh and Nias is channeled through a $291 million grant for the implementation of ETESP, which covers agriculture, fisheries, micro- and small-sized enterprise development, irrigation, housing, water and sanitation, health, education, roads and bridges, power, spatial planning and environmental management, and fiduciary oversight components.

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