Solomon Islands | Where We Work | Global Partnership for Education

COVID-19 response

Allocation: US$0.75 million

Year: 2020-2022

Grant agent: UNICEF

Key documents:

The US$750,000 COVID-19 grant supports:

Preparing messages and guidance for students, parents and families to support learning at home for students and proper sanitary practices
Establishing a child protection policy and training to respond to relevant child protection issues, including gender-based violence
Preparing for future school closures by developing a home-based learning program for every level of education
Creating a task force to develop learning materials and ensure vulnerable students can access learning resources
Developing strategies to address re-enrollment issues and school dropouts during times of crisis and how to address psychosocial issues.

In late March 2020, the UNICEF office in the Solomon Islands received a GPE grant of US$70,000 to support the Ministry of Education in preparing its response to the coronavirus pandemic, in particular for remote learning.

Education in the Solomon Islands

Regional strategy: PacREF

In 2018, the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat’s Education Ministers, in which the Solomon Islands participate, adopted the Pacific Regional Education Framework (PacREF) 2018-2030: Moving Towards Education 2030.

PacREF outlines a transformative and sustainable regional education agenda aligned with global agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly SDG 4, and Education 2030: Incheon Declaration on Education for All Framework for Action.

The 12-year framework promotes equitable access to high quality education by all Pacific Islanders with a view to enable their countries to effectively deal with the development challenges facing the Pacific region.

The framework also encourages inclusivity and opportunities for equal access to informal, primary, secondary and tertiary education and training. It focuses particularly on education quality and the importance of working cooperatively in the region and beyond.

While Pacific countries integrate what they consider as the relevant parts of the PacREF Program into their national education policies, programs and practices, the Framework also provides a means for identifying and understanding similarities and differences across the region. It offers organizing mechanisms for sector planning, reporting and collaboration, and give development partners with an understanding of where the region’s resourcing priorities lie.

The PacREF has 4 key policy areas to maximize gains in student learning outcomes and well-being:

Quality and relevance: Provide all learners with a safe and supportive environment, within which they are offered high quality learning opportunities that are meaningful, valuable, inclusive and future-focused.
Learning pathway: Provide all learners equal access to multiple and seamless pathways and modalities of learning that will allow them to meet their full potential.
Student outcomes and wellbeing: Make sure all learners acquire the knowledge, skills, values and attributes to enable them to contribute to their families, communities and to nation building.
The teaching profession: Support and empower teachers through opportunities for continuous development, shared understanding and accountability.

PacREF is divided into three 4-year phases to facilitate in-depth program review by the education ministers.

Latest grant

Students from Solomon Islands.

CREDIT: World Bank East Asia and Pacific Region

Development objective: Equitably raise the quality of schooling and student learning outcomes across the Pacific region.

Allocation: US$14,997,510

Years: 2021-2024

Grant agent: ADB

Utilization: US$0

This first regional grant of US$14.9 million covers six countries: Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, and Tuvalu. It supports the PacREF Program implementation, which is also supported by the New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade the PacREF implementing agencies and other development partners.

The GPE grant covers 85% of the total costs of the PacREF program.

The program will produce an integrated set of regional goods, services and standards that are:

(i) tested and contextualized to reflect the prevailing circumstances in each participating country’s education system, and
(ii) subsequently embedded in those systems as routine practices.

The program has four components (the PacREF key policy areas):

Increase the quality and relevance of education at all levels by providing all learners with a safe and supportive environment with high-quality, meaningful, valuable, inclusive, and forward-looking learning opportunities. This will consist of:
- identifying and agreeing on a definition of non-cognitive skills
- assessing the needs based on the status of the quality of learning environments
- establishing quality assurance frameworks for school learning environments.
Ensure that learners’ needs are met by giving them access to a broad range of programs, delivery modalities and seamless pathways to allow them to fulfill their maximum potential. This includes:
- developing guidelines for quality early childhood education, tools for governance, management, quality assurance and financing
- establishing a framework, tools and processes for home-to-school transition
- setting up a framework for identifying learning pathways from early childhood education to adulthood
- creating a Pacific skills portal and organizing a Pacific skills dialogue and summit.
Make sure all learners achieve their maximum potential by acquiring the necessary knowledge, skills, values and attributes to enable them to successfully contribute to their families, communities, and nation. This implies:
- improving literacy and numeracy instruction through Waka Learning Hub used by in-service teachers
- establishing a Pacific Islands Literacy and Numeracy Assessment (primary)
- aligning lower secondary assessment with SDG 4.1.1

Support and empower teachers through opportunities for continuous development, shared understanding and accountability. This aims at developing competent, qualified, and certified teachers and school leaders who are fully supported, engaged, effective and committed to their students by:
- setting up teacher competency standards
- instituting accreditation and recognition of teacher education programs
- establishing standards and qualifications in school leadership
- creating a framework for continuous professional development.

Implementing agencies will provide technical support for the development and implementation of these tools and services, while countries are expected to make the best use of them to improve their national education systems, as well as enhance Pacific regionalism.

The grant complements the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) existing technical assistance project.

Grants

All amounts are in US dollars.

Grant type	Years	Allocations	Utilization	Grant agent
Program implementation	2021-2024	14,997,510 **	0	ADB
COVID-19	2020-2022	750,000	423,699	UNICEF
Sector plan development	2020-2022	358,374	358,374	UNICEF
Sector plan development	2017-2018	195,102 *	195,102	ADB
Program development	2020-2021	389,875 *	389,875	ADB
	Total	16,690,861	1,367,050

Data last updated: May 26, 2023

** This is a regional grant for Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu.

* The program development grant is a regional grant for Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands and Tonga. The sector plan development grant covers the Pacific region.

As part of its investment in civil society advocacy and social accountability efforts, GPE’s Education Out Loud fund is supporting the Coalition for Education Solomon Islands (COESI) 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.