SEQAEP expands to 215

FE Team | Published: April 02, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

FE Report
The Secondary Education Quality and Access Enhancement Project (SEQAEP) has expanded to 215 upazilas from its present coverage of 125 upazilas. The project provided stipend to nearly one million poor students during the first semester of 2013. Another 318,000 new entrants at Grade 6 have been identified as potential beneficiaries in 2014.
According to a World Bank press release on Tuesday, in the academic year 2013, some 40,000 students have received best student awards and 60,000 'poor' students have received awards on completion of Secondary School Certificate (SSC).
At the same time, 350 institutions received institutional achievement awards for best performance based on the SSC results. The project also organised 412,000 additional classes on English and Mathematics for weaker students in the weaker schools. About 792,000 students in 6700 institutions have been brought under a "developing reading habit program" with support from Bishwa Sahitya Kendra, the press release added.
The SEQAEP is being scaled to 215 upazilas with an additional financing of $265 million from the World Bank. The project emphasises improvement of secondary education quality through a series of academic support interventions and incentive schemes. It systematically measures the quality of learning and academic competencies of students. The project provides incentive awards to students, teachers and schools and extends support to students in English and Mathematics in order to improve academic performance.
The additional financing, until the end of 2017, will provide support to more than 11,000 secondary level institutions in the poorer upazilas and help the Government prepare for a comprehensive sector-wide programme beginning from 2018 with support from all development partners involved in secondary education. The Government is also institutionalising a learning assessment system under the project that provides concrete evidence to show how well the system is functioning to help students achieve learning outcomes and what strategic inputs are needed for improvement of the system.