Education Improvement Project

The objectives of the Education Improvement Project are to improve school readiness of children entering primary education, improve physical conditions and the availability of educational resources in upper secondary schools, and support improved quality and relevance in higher education institutions in Armenia. There are three components to the project, the first component being enhancing the quality of general education. The second component is the mainstreaming of the Competitive Innovation Fund (CIF) for Higher Education Institutions (HEI) into full implementation. The objective of this component is to support the roll-out of the competitive grant program for HEIs that was developed and piloted under the Second Education Quality and Relevance Project (EQRP2). The fund was designed to support the best proposals prepared by HEIs with the aim of improving the quality, promoting modernization and particularly the labor-market relevance of the academic programs as well as increasing efficiency, equity and the development of new academic programs of HEIs. The CIF will support on a competitive basis projects in the following three main areas: (i) quality improvement, (ii) relevance improvements; and (iii) efficiency promotion. Innovative project proposals with a focus on underserved groups or regions would be particularly encouraged. Finally, the third component is the project management, monitoring and evaluation. The key objective of this component is to provide continued support for the management and monitoring of project implementation activities and outcomes.