The Ministry of Basic and Senior Secondary Education (MBSSE) with funding from the World Bank will be rolling out a Performance Based Financing (PBF) grant of $19.2 million for a total of 5074 primary schools with full cycle (CLASS 1-6).
According to the Project Coordinator for the Free Education Project Secretariat (FEPS) Ambrose Sesay, PBF school grant is designed to benefit both Approved & Non Approved schools ( i.e. those that are non-private primary schools) i.e government, government – assisted and some community schools.
“The school grant is to be paid per term which is three times in a year. However, following Crisis & Emergency Risk Communication (CERC) this provision has been revised and the grants are now to be paid two terms in a year,” he said.
He said the data will be collected during each grant payment cycle on the performance indicators some of which are, the amount paid to schools is based on performance on predefined set of indicators such as pupil attendance, teacher attendance, quality of school management with sub indicators such as School Management Committee (SMC) meetings, preparation of School Improvement Plans (SIPs), Pupils reading competences; and also some equity indicators like the school being unapproved, the school serving a poor community, being a ‘small’ school and the school accommodating a disabled pupils.
He said so far, the project has procured 508 data collection equipment (tablets, power banks and chargers) and installed the ODK app on them with TA from DSTI to enhance data collection on the PBF indicators in all the beneficiary primary schools.
“A total of 508 enumerators/data collectors have been identified nationwide. These data collectors have been trained on the ODK data collection tool as well as the use of the data collection equipment. Subsequently, four rounds of Data Collection on PBF indicators have been conducted in all Primary Schools i.e for terms 2 and 3 of the 2021/22 academic year, terms 1 & 3 of 2022/23 academic year,” he said.
Mr. Sesay said the project trained a total 12,928 members of the School Management Committees at community/cluster level nationwide on the processes and procedures of the PBF, and also on School Based Management Practices, adding that to further enhance the efficiency of the SMCs in the management of the schools, the project has procured and is in the process of distributing off-the-shelf School Based Management toolkits and templates to 6464 (PBF and Non-PBF) primary schools nationwide.
He said an Independent verification/audit of the use of the PBF funds in a sample of schools has been conducted by the Audit Firm, BDO and the stakeholder validation of the report of the verification will be held in Kenema on the 20th September, 2023.
