EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Government of Republic of Zambia (GRZ) is seeking additional financing from the World
Bank for the Zambia Education Enhancement Project (ZEEP) Additional Financing (AF) to
help us scale up the geographical as well as technical scope of interventions to achieve systemic
impact.
Project Description -ZEEP Phase I
The Zambia Education Enhancement Project (ZEEP) phase I is a national project by the
Government of the Republic of Zambia (GRZ) under the Ministry of Education (MoE) that
aims is to improve the quality of teaching and learning in mathematics and science in targeted
primary and secondary schools and to increase equitable access to secondary education. The
Project comprised three components namely:
 Improving the Quality of Teaching and Learning,
 Increasing Equitable Access to Secondary Education,
 Enhancing M&E Capacity and Project Coordination
ZEEP-Additional Financing
Proposed Additional Financing (AF) to ZEEP aims to build on the on-going reforms focusing
on system-wide approach with all actors aligned around learning and equitable access, so
quality education reaches everyone. ZEEP, which uses an Investment Project Financing (IPF)
with Results-based Financing (RBF) modality, is designed to achieve systemic impact in terms
of reforming teacher’s professional development practices to improve teachers’ competencies;
transform teaching learning practice; and provide critical teaching learning material inputs to
the schools to assist better teaching and learning. ZEEP is also increasing access to secondary
education through expanding eighty-two existing primary schools, where a significant number
of students move out of the system after completing primary because of lack of secondary
schools in the vicinity. The girls are the worst affected as they are forced to discontinue
schooling because of long distance to the closest secondary school, which on an average is 15
to 20 kilometers away from the habitation without any transport facility.
Although ZEEP is supporting transformative reforms, the geographical scope of coverage is
relatively small because of relatively limited resources in view of the greater needs in the
country. Additional financing to the tune of US$120 million or more to the ZEEP would help
us scale up the geographical as well as technical scope of interventions to achieve systemic
impact. The Project could cover a large number of low-performing primary and secondary
schools and teachers out of the existing 11,000 schools and more than 100,000 teachers
respectively. Furthermore, equity issues, particularly related to gender, and rural-urban in terms
of access to quality secondary education could be addressed more effectively through both
supply and demand side interventions.
The proposed second AF (AF2) will introduce the following changes: (i) revision of the
construction package to include additional infrastructure to meet the new minimum school
design standards requested by the GRZ; (ii) revision of activities under non construction
component particularly those to be covered by the government sector wide programs; (iii)
revision of the disbursement linked indicators (DLIs) and disbursement linked results (DLRs)
in the results framework. In addition, the AF provides an opportunity to strengthen governance
and transparency mechanisms including those around fiduciary and safeguards. There will be
ii
no change to the Project Development Objective (PDO), geographical coverage, targeted
beneficiaries or closing date.
An additional 120 schools are earmarked to be built in all the 10 provinces including
Copperbelt, North-Western and Western. This investment will increase the current number of
secondary schools by about 20 percent. Weekly boarding facilities for both boys and girls,
through the costed national school infrastructure development plan is also planned to be built
in 25 schools. Furthermore, the construction of teachers’ residences was expected to be built
on a needs-basis with water and sanitation facilities18, and electricity provision, as well as the
rehabilitation of existing structures that pose safety risks to students and teachers. While
construction of secondary schools will be nationwide, the critical rehabilitation, WASH,
teacher residences, electricity provision, etc. will be focused on the project target schools. Other
planned activities include supporting training of province and district-level building officers
and engineers, technical supervisors, and community-level Project Implementation
Committees (PICs) on procurement, financial management (FM), and technical aspects of
construction; use of a tablet-based monitoring system and related training; hiring of an
independent third party construction supervision and support consultant. To forge stronger
synergy with the KGS component of the GEWEL Project, need-based weekly boarding
facilities will be constructed, and WASH facilities will be provided in the schools hosting a
sizable number of KGS beneficiary girls. All construction financed under ZEEP-AF will adhere
to defined quality standards and disability friendly norms.