Education in Mongolia

COVID-19 response

In late March 2020, the UNICEF office in Mongolia received a GPE grant of US$70,000 to support the Ministry of Education in planning its response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

The education sector in Mongolia achieved significant outcomes over the past years in modifying pre-primary, primary and secondary education curricula and vocational education and training, higher education and program content; revising student textbooks and learning materials, and establishing a favorable learning environment.

Positive changes were also made in the supply of qualified teachers and the capacity of kindergarten and school buildings.

But despite these significant outcomes, the sector still faces challenges such as:

Enhancing the quality of education services
Eliminating the urban-rural gap
Establishing a child-friendly and accessible learning environment
Strengthening cross-sector linkages and building partnerships with all stakeholders
Improving governance and management of the education system.

To address these challenges, the country adopted the Education Sector Medium-Term Development Plan (2021-2030) in October 2020, to provide all citizens with equal access to education services, ensure vertical and horizontal links in education policies, disseminate smart and digital technology at all levels of education, and promote green development in the learning environment and materials.

Designed in conformity with Mongolia’s long-term development policy document - Vision 2050, and relevant laws, policies and regulations, the end goal of Mongolia’s education sector plan is “To ensure the holistic development of Mongolian citizens with competencies to thrive in the digital technology era as active participants in a knowledge-based society which enables life-long learning through quality, open, inclusive and flexible education services”.

The plan identifies policy priorities for each sub-sector to:

Enhance quality and relevance of education system and services
Increase equal access and inclusiveness in the services
Improve the efficiency of education governance, management and administration.

With its focus on holistic human development, the plan is based on the following overarching principles:

Provide equal opportunity to all citizens to access education services
Strengthen and support shared responsibility and accountability among stakeholders
Strengthen sustainable and professional management
Ensure vertical and horizontal linkages of education policies
Utilize smart and digital technology at all education levels
Promote green development in learning environment and materials.

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Latest grant

In rural schools across Mongolia, students and teachers create "big books" based on stories they read from classroom libraries, a teaching method that effectively improves students’ reading skills. Dadal County, Mongolia.

CREDIT: Khasar Sandag/World Bank

Development objective: Improve access and quality of learning through inclusive approaches.

Allocation: US$5,000,000

Years: 2022-2025

Grant agent: Save the Children Australia

Utilization: US$0

Mongolia’s $5 million Multiplier grant supports the project titled Enabling Equity to Advance Learning (EQUAL).

The program aims to increase all children’s opportunities to access primary and secondary education regardless of their socio-economic status and geographical location promoting equal and inclusive education services.

Its three main components are:

Improve capacity for mainstream primary and lower-secondary schools to provide learning support for children with disabilities by:
- Training teachers on inclusive education, particularly the use of individualized education plans and learning assessment for students with disabilities.
- Piloting the deployment of special education teachers for Student Development Support Classrooms (SDSC).
- Providing assistive devices, tools and equipment for children through SDSC.
Improve the quality of school meals by:
- Providing necessary equipment and auxiliary tools to support school feeding in targeted boarding schools in remote areas and special schools.
- Building the capacity of school-based nutritionists, dieticians and cooks through gender-sensitive trainings on school feeding production and services.
- Increasing awareness and capacity of teachers, parents and students on the importance of school feeding through campaigns.
Create contextually appropriate blended learning model to improve student learning achievement by:
- Creating benchmarks and standards for digital infrastructure; administrative systems to support education technology; and human resources at the national, local and school level.
- Developing national, provincial and district level plans to operationalize blended learning for primary and secondary schools.
- Improving school based digital infrastructure including connectivity.

The Multiplier grant has helped the country leverage US$15.75 million: $2 million from Save the Children Japan, $5.75 million from JICA, and $8 million from KOICA.

Grants

All amounts are in US dollars.

Grant type	Years	Allocations	Utilization	Grant agent
Multiplier	2022-2025	5,000,000	0	Save the Children Australia
Program implementation	2012-2015	9,878,779	9,878,779	WB	Completion report
Program implementation	2007-2013	29,400,000	29,400,000	WB
Sector plan development	2019-2020	472,100	472,095	WB
Program development	2021-2022	187,796	187,796	Save the Children Australia
	Total	44,938,675	39,938,670

Data last updated: May 26, 2023

As part of its investment in civil society advocacy and social accountability efforts, GPE’s Education Out Loud fund is supporting the “All for Education!” National Civil Society Coalition for the 2019-2021 period.

This builds on 11 years of Civil Society Education Fund (CSEF) support to national education coalitions for their engagement in education sector policy dialogue.

GPE had provided the “All for Education!” National Civil Society Coalition with a grant from the CSEF to support its engagement in education sector policy dialogue and citizens’ voice in education quality, equity, and financing and sector reform.