Brazil’s Pará State Will Modernize Its Education System with IDB Support

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved a $100 million loan to improve educational access and equality in the State of Pará in Brazil. This is the sixth individual operation under a conditional credit line for investment projects (CCLIP) for Brazil's social spending modernization program (ProSocial).  

The operation, approved by the IDB's Executive Board of Directors, is the second to support the education sector in the State of Pará. The previous project helped Pará increase the on-time high school graduation rate of young people by a substantial 17 percentage points. 

Pará is part of the Amazon rainforest and Brazil's second biggest state, covering 1,247 thousand km2 with many rivers and other physical barriers. This makes school access difficult. As of 2019, 4.2% of the state's population between 4 and 17 years old were not enrolled in school. The main determinants affecting education access and quality are the limited coverage of schools, the lack of appropriate physical and digital infrastructure, the limited pedagogical practices, and the lack of equitable policies for vulnerable groups, among others.   

This loan will finance the construction of five new schools, the renovation and expansion of 95 existing schools, and the acquisition of new furniture and equipment to improve connectivity and expand access. The operation will benefit almost 600,000 students enrolled in the state schools of Pará, more than 15,000 teachers, and 882 school principals from the state education system that will develop new skills. The operation will also support designing and implementing policies focused on decreasing learning gaps. Policies will include school learning recovery programs, large-scale remote tutoring programs, informational campaigns focused on High School completion, and software licenses for individualized digital learning resources.   

To provide culturally relevant education for indigenous, quilombolas, and ribeirinhos communities, the initiative will expand education programs for remote communities and develop pertinent curricula and instructional materials. It will also finance teachers' training, equipment for audiovisual studios for creating content for remote communities' educational programs, and equipment for classrooms to receive the signal for the studios.  

The project will also strengthen the State Secretary of Education's institutional capacity to monitor, evaluate, and manage processes to support improvements in all specific objectives.  

The IDB loan of $100 million has a disbursement period of 6 years, a grace period of 7 years, an amortization period of 23.5 years, and an interest rate based on SOFR. The state will also invest $25 million as counterpart resources.