Three Decades of Support to Improve Sri Lanka’s Education

Education is closely related to poverty reduction. Among household heads without any education in Sri Lanka, the incidence of poverty is almost 46 percent while it is only 18 percent for those with secondary education. The International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank fund that helps the world’s poorest countries has been the largest foreign development partner in the education sector of Sri Lanka since the mid-1980s. A series of ambitious programs have engaged with every level of the Sri Lankan education system, evolving from primary education to higher education sectors and expanding both horizontally as well as vertically to support hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries. Currently, 10,000 public schools, 15 public universities, and more recently 6000 Early Childhood Development (ECD) centers are covered. However, while significant challenges remain, the education sector has many achievements to celebrate.