Georgia : Georgia: Support for General Education Reforms (Secondary Education)

Education / Secondary

The TA is aligned with the following impact: Georgia's education reform roadmap improved. The TA will have the following outcome: Planning capacity in Georgia's general education sector enhanced. The design and monitoring framework is in Attachment 2.

Outputs and Activities:

The TA will provide specialized consulting services to support the planning capacity for education reform in general education and the preparation of a sector assessment and policy reform roadmap. The TA will recruit individual consultants to undertake:

(i)Output 1: Secondary education sector assessment and policy reform roadmap developed;

(ii)Output 2: MOES sector knowledge and planning capacity improved;

(iii)Output 3: A medium-term expenditure plan for secondary education developed.

Since mid-2000s Georgia's education sector has undergone significant reforms with progress made in ensuring near universal access to school education with rebuilt schools, improved curriculum, teacher training, and learning assessment along with improvements in sector governance and financing. The reforms have taken place in a largely corruption-free environment and have improved access to education. The government has demonstrated that it is able to take up and implement difficult reform pathways, such as the scheme to provide elderly and under-qualified teachers a generous retirement package and the cessation of the high-stake exit examinations. The education infrastructure upgrade in schools, followed by an increased use of IT and communication technology, improved the learning environment in schools. Government spending on education tripled to GEL 1.8 billion over 20102019, including a doubling of teacher salaries. The government plans to boost the sector expenditure to 6% of GDP from 2022.

General education, which accounted for half of government spending on education and 78% of total enrollment in 2019, is by far the largest sub-sector of Georgia's education system. It covers 12 years of study, split into Primary (grades 1-6), Lower Secondary (grades 7-9) and Upper Secondary (grades 10-12) levels. Net school enrollment rate was high at about 96% in 2019 with 593 thousand pupils attending about 2,086 public and 227 private schools across the country. The school population is heavily concentrated in urban areas with four major cities of Tbilisi, Batumi, Kutaisi and Rustavi accounting for about half of school enrollments in 2020.

ADB has been actively supporting Georgia's education reforms in the vocational education subsector with the approval of $70 million Modern Skills for Better Jobs Sector Development Program in December 2020. The program will help increase labor productivity in Georgia and enhance the competitiveness of its economy by improving access to quality vocation education and training in the country. Due to this first successful engagement in Georgia's education sector, ADB is well-positioned to expand its support into general education, where the government is need of technical and knowledge support to elaborate and carry forward the important reform agenda.

The proposed TA is fully aligned with the Country Partnership Strategy 2019-2023, which prioritizes policy and budgetary support to enhance Georgia's education sector management, and improve quality of education starting with secondary education, and vocational education and training. The TA precedes and prepares ground for a larger scale intervention by ADB in Georgia's general education sector through a sector development program Improving Learning Outcomes in General Education planned under 2023 firm pipeline of the draft Georgia Country Operations Business Plan 2022-2024.

Georgia's education reform roadmap improved

Planning capacity in Georgia's general education sector enhanced

Secondary education sector assessment, including gender, and gender sensitive policy reform roadmap developed.