IDB will finance USD 200 million for early education
The project will benefit 70,000 children ages 0 to 5 from the North of the country and Greater Buenos Aires.
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved financing for USD 200 million for Argentina, aimed at increasing early education coverage for children between the ages of 0 to 5 in a socially vulnerable situation.
The project will also have a USD 26-million local contribution and it will give priority to the Provinces of the Northwest and Northeast of Argentina and Greater Buenos Aires.
The initiative will be emphasized in public services with quality criteria aimed at the promotion of the development of physical, language, communication, cognitive and socioemotional skills of children between the ages of 0 to 5. To such end, the operation has two elements.
The first element is the strengthening of out-of-school interventions to promote child development for children between 45 days to 4 years old. This way, the access to early childhood institutions that meet the quality standards will be increased. In addition, the program will develop tools to increase the effectiveness of interventions, improving education in the 200 towns with unsatisfied basic needs.
The second element is the financing to increase education infrastructure, as well as strengthening school administration and the improvement of teaching-learning processes. The main activities are the following: construction and extension of 98 kindergartens; the acquisition of pedagogical equipment; the implementation of training mechanisms for planning and management for technical teams, supervisors, directors and teachers; the introduction of innovative pedagogical models in early education and the implementation of a quality test of learning environment in kindergartens.
The project arose from the need of closing the development gap of the two poorest regions of Argentina. It is estimated that the 15% of children between the ages of 3 to 5 of the country do not reach the development level expected for their age and it is more evident in children belonging to households with lower socioeconomic levels. In this sense, the project has been prepared together with the Ministry of Education and Sports and the Ministry of Social Development.