Your impact
through education

Education Report – October 2018 (data to June 2018)

Currently 27,296 families are using school fee loans to manage their finances and keep their kids learning in school. Including these families, EduFinance in India has now benefitted 215,283 children, helping them break the cycle of poverty with better education.

PORTFOLIO CONTINUING TO STRENGTHEN

While the long-term impact of demonetisation continues to be seen in the portfolio's high PAR30 of 12.24% (the measurement of loans outstanding by more than 30 days), this figure has been steadily declining since its peak in Q2, 2017.

GROWING GLOBAL FOOTPRINT

Globally, EduFinance has benefitted 2,321,409 children. The initiative is working with 27 partners in 17 countries.

NEXT STEPS FOR ASIA

The EduFinance team have progressed discussions with a number of potential new partners, both in India and other countries in the region. Ahead of these imminent partnerships the team have recruited education expert Dr Amrita Vohra to lead the introduction of our Education Quality framework in schools taking out school improvemet loans

Education Report – March 2019 (data to December 2018)

To December 2018, EduFinance had 40,599 active loans in India. This includes both school fee loans and school improvement loans, offered through long-standing program partner ESAF as well as more recent partners Indian School Finance Company (ISFC) and Shiksha.

EduFinance has now benefitted cumulative 536,360 children in Asia, helping families break the cycle of poverty through education. 

GROWING GLOBAL FOOTPRINT

Globally, EduFinance has benefitted 3,249,487 children – this has grown 928,078 over the past six months.  The initiative has now worked with 36 partners in 20 countries.

NEXT STEPS FOR ASIA

2018 also saw strong growth in the global Education Quality program, which has now reached out to 1,069 schools. The first schools in Asia are beginning to implement Education Quality with a pilot program launching in India in the second half of 2018. 

Meet Charanjeet

Charanjeet Kaur, 40, lives in Dongargarh, a city in the state of Chhattisgarh. Together with her husband, Harbhajan, she has two sons; Harjeet and Mandeep. The family’s home is a rented house with two rooms and a small kitchen where most days Charanjeet prepares vegetable curries, rice and roti for her family.

Charanjeet earns a small income crafting ornaments used to decorate Hindu Goddess statues. Meanwhile her husband runs a welding unit where her eldest son, Harjeet, works too.

Her youngest son, Mandeep, is a talented student with dreams of becoming an engineer. But in the past Charanjeet would struggle to save away enough to cover the lump sum needed to cover the school fees.

Thanks to your support Mandeep can now go to school and receive quality education.

With a small education loan, Charanjeet no longer worries she won’t be able to cover the fees and send her son to school and she can better budget and manage her family’s finances.

We are a happy family. Thank you for understanding what we wanted.

Charanjeet

Cumulative child impact (CCI) is used to estimate the number of children who have benefited from both current and historical loans since partnering with Opportunity, including both school fee and school improvement loans.

Portfolio at risk is a stringent measure of a microfinance institution’s loan portfolio quality. The portfolio at risk calculates the total value of outstanding loan balances for loans, for every payment that is overdue by more than 30 days.

Meet Madhuri

On a road in Nagpur, India, Madhuri walks her children to school in their freshly pressed school uniforms, large backpacks engulfing their tiny frames. Ria (4) and Yesh (5) are two of the only children in the area able to attend the community school—many parents can't afford to send their children anywhere other than the poorly resourced local public school, particularly at so young an age. But Madhuri has always wanted her children to receive a quality education, and, with your support, Opportunity's school fee loans have made this possible.

Madhuri and her husband Ajay married for love, and are determined their children will have every opportunity to live the lives they choose. Both parents work very long hours—Madhuri in her sewing business and Ajay seven days a week in a factory, as well as a night watchman after hours.

But the family still struggled to afford regular meals and the rent on their tiny basement home. They squirrelled away every spare rupee, hoping to save enough to pay for the tuition and uniform costs that every school—public, community or private—required. The large sums due at the beginning of each school year used to fill them with dread.

But news of the Opportunity school fee loan brought hope. Madhuri and Ajay excitedly applied and were accepted. The loan immediately made school fees manageable, with only small instalments due each week as opposed to a lump sum required at the start of the school year.

Madhuri and Ajay make it a priority to pay their loan repayments every week—they're determined to take out another school fee loan next year, and one after that.

Ria and Yesh love learning the alphabet in their kindergarten. Yesh loves playing cricket and dreams of becoming a policeman when he grows up.

Madhuri used to worry about how they would afford to pay for him to stay in school long enough to achieve his dream. She doesn't worry about that any longer.

Thanks to your hand up, Ria and Yesh now have the chance to learn to read and write, to study in their chosen fields, to break free from the cycle of poverty and to live out their dreams—as policemen, lawyers, doctors or artisans—whatever careers they dream of.

And with each school fee loan that is repaid and recycled, other families are given the opportunity to afford the education that will rewrite their children's futures.

Meet Sapna

When Sapna was a child she enjoyed one incredible priviliage too many girls her age didn't – and still don't. She grew up surrounded by a supportive family committed to educating all their children, even girls. 

As just a 4th grader, Sapna was already taking action against the injustices in her community. Her neighbor and friend Pinky didn’t go to school, because Pinky's family could not afford to send her. Each afternoon Sapna would race home from school, books ready to teach Pinky everything she had learnt that day in her classes.

In Sapna’s mind, education should be for everyone, even those who can’t afford it or don’t believe they deserve it.

Today, Sapna runs a low-cost, affordable private school – also referred to as a community school – in her community. Educating over 200 local children, her school provides an alternative to under-resourced, over-subscribed public schools. 

By paying a small fee – which kind-hearted Sapna is known to waive when families fall on hard times – parents secure better quality education for their kids, while supporting their school to become a sustainable business. 

With access to tailored education finance products, schools like Sapna's can invest in better infrastructure and resources, while parents can secure the hand up they need to make sure they can pay school fees year-round.

EDUCATION REPORT – MARCH 2020 (DATA TO DECEMBER 2019)

India

HIGHLIGHTS

Opportunity’s partners in EduFinance currently have 80,330 active loans in India. This includes both 75,589 school fee loans and two tertiary tuition loans, as well as 359 tertiary institutions and 4,380 schools with improvement loans, offered through long-standing program partner ESAF as well as more recent partners, Indian School Finance Company (ISFC) and Shiksha. School improvement loans are used to build more classrooms to accommodate more students, as well as other assets such as desks, chairs, computers and projectors.

EduFinance has now benefitted approximately 1.3 million children in India, helping these families break the cycle of poverty through education. Our cumulative child impact in India has grown rapidly in the past six months, with an additional estimated 260,000 children now benefitting.

LESSONS

While demand for education loans has grown rapidly, the uptake of the complementing EduQuality program has been slower, with only nine affordable schools in India participating. Finding ways to reduce the cost of the EduQuality program may increase the uptake.

Pilots are underway in Ghana to trial the digital delivery of the core components of the EduQuality program, including completing school quality assessments, creating school development plans, and delivering content such as policy templates, teaching resources and teacher training. Delivering EduQuality program through technology has the potential to reduce the costs of improving conditions for learning in schools and maintaining the quality of the program at scale. Digital delivery of the EduQuality program opens new opportunities to support schools in hard-to-reach contexts.

Pakistan

HIGHLIGHTS

Pakistan has one of the highest rates of unschooled primary-aged children. To combat this, Opportunity worked with financial institutions SAFCO and Kashf in 2019 to begin EduFinance programs in Pakistan. Through this collaboration, 1,814 schools are using loans to make improvements so more children can access better education. 

It is estimated that these schools cater to approximately 250,000 Pakistani school children. The school improvement loans are used to build classrooms, toilets, and dormitories, as well as to buy school buses to make it easier for school children to get to school. 

Market research into the affordable private school sector in Pakistan showed there was strong demand for training (e.g. in administration set up, financial management, teaching best-practices) provided alongside the school improvement loan. This demand is reflected in the uptake of the EduQuality program by 127 schools across Lahore, Gujranwala and Faisalabad.

LESSONS

According to a 2019 UNESCO report, the world is off-target to reach SDG 4 – ‘to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all’ by 2030. Children are still being excluded and many are still dropping out, and it is projected that by 2030 at this rate, 40 per cent of young people will not complete high school and most of these will be from the poorest families. EduFinance and EduQuality aims to increase access to quality education for families living in poverty to accelerate progress towards achieving SDG 4.   

EDUCATION PARTNER SUMMARY, ASIA

EDUCATION REPORT – DECEMBER 2019 (DATA TO JUNE 2019)

India

Highlights

Opportunity’s partners in EduFinance currently have 49,800 active loans in Asia. This includes both school fee loans and school improvement loans, offered through long-standing program partner ESAF as well as our more recent partners, Indian School Finance Company (ISFC) and Shiksha.

EduFinance has now benefited 1,013,015 children in India, helping these families break the cycle of poverty through education. Our cumulative child impact* in Asia has grown rapidly in the past six months, almost double the number of children now benefiting.

Representatives from ESAF attended the recent 2019 EduFinance Conference in Uganda that brought together more than 25 financial institutions that offer education-focused loans. The conference provided the opportunity for shared learning across the sector.

Lessons

While demand for education loans has grown, the uptake of our complementing Education Quality program has been slower than previously expected. We are trialling new methods to make this program more available—and more attractive—to the schools that can benefit from it most.

Pakistan

Highlights

Pakistan has one of the highest rates of primary-aged children not in school. To combat this, Opportunity recently welcomed new partners SAFCO and Kashf to the EduFinance program to begin EduFinance programs in Pakistan. The partnership has now helped 17,500 children access better education, and we look forward to seeing continued growth for the rest of 2019 and beyond.

With new partner Kashf, Opportunity is piloting the EduQuality program in Pakistan with 150 affordable private schools across Lahore, Gujranwala and Faisalabad. Through the pilot, schools will complete a self-assessment to evaluate school quality, create a school development plan, and receive training in specified areas.

Education Partner Summary, Asia

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EDUCATION REPORT – OCTOBER 2020 (DATA TO JUNE 2020)

STRATEGIC DIRECTION

The first half of 2020 was dominated by the impact of COVID-19 as most governments around the world temporarily closed educational institutions in an attempt to contain the spread of the pandemic. At its worst, at the beginning of April 2020, schools were closed in 193 countries, affecting 91.2 per cent of total enrolled learners which United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) estimated to be almost 1.6 billion students. By 30 June 2020, schools in 88 countries remained closed, including India and Pakistan, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This affected 51 per cent of enrolled learners worldwide. 

The main objectives of Opportunity’s Education Finance program through the crisis is to support schools to avoid their permanent closure so they can open again once lockdowns are lifted; support financial institutions that provide education finance to parents and schools so finance is available so that students can continue their education; and promote continued learning during school closures. 

Throughout this crisis, Opportunity Global* has continued to provide technical assistance and support, albeit remotely, financial institutions that lend to affordable non-state schools. These low-fee educational institutions typically are not funded by the government and have low cash reserves. Temporary school closures significantly impact their income, as parents stop paying school fees, while the schools try to continue to pay teachers’ salaries which typically make up 50–60 per cent of total school budgets. The EduQuality team’s priority is to do what they can to support schools so that they can eventually reopen and not face permanent closure. Keeping the schools operational gives the best hope of students returning to school after the lockdowns. Opportunity’s EduQuality team is providing online resources to financial and educational institutions to support their survival through the crisis.

During this period, there was a slowdown in the disbursement of education loans: both school fee loans and school improvement loans. However, by 30 June 2020, the slowdown had begun to show signs of abating with financial institutions in India and Pakistan reporting overall growth in the number of loans disbursed to parents and schools compared with December 2019.

PARTNER PERFORMANCE

INDIA

By 25 March 2020, all educational institutions in India had closed, affecting more than 320 million learners. Initially during lockdown, some state governments in India passed orders of ‘no school, no fee collection’ which meant that even parents who had the means to pay could refuse and school fee payments declined. 

Financial institutions that offer education loans have also been severely affected. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) initially required financial institutions to offer a three-month moratorium to borrowers, which was later extended until 31 August 2020.

Despite the challenges, School Fee Loans grew with an additional 24,574 families able to cover the cost of sending their children to school in the period from Jan – June 2020. Overall, 170 fewer schools borrowed to fund improvements to infrastructure or to purchase fixed assets in the same period.

PAKISTAN

By 16 March 2020, all educational institutions in Pakistan had closed, affecting more than 320 million learners. Overall growth in School Improvement Loans from January to June 2020 slowed to an additional 143 schools using loans to make improvements so that children can access better education.

In Pakistan, 129 schools participate in EduQuality, a program of Opportunity EduFinance, that has provided additional support to weather the storm of the COVID-19 crisis. Of these schools, 80 per cent have competed a Pathways to Excellence Self-Assessment – a guide for school leaders to self-diagnose the quality of education at their school using 18 measurable indicators of school quality. Using the results of their assessment, 67 per cent have created a School Development Plan to improve areas of greatest need. In June 2020, the first School Leadership Professional Development Training seminars were offered through Zoom calls with recordings disseminated via WhatsApp for schools unable to attend. 

EDUCATION PARTNER SUMMARY, ASIA

*Opportunity Global is the implementing partner for the Education Program (Opportunity EduFinance and EduQuality) and along with Opportunity Australia, is part of the broader Opportunity International Network. Opportunity Australia provides funding to Opportunity Global to support the Education Program in Asia.

**School Improvement Loan – typically small to medium loans made to schools (non-state affordable), for the purposes of improving school infrastructure or the purchase of fixed assets. 

School Fee – loan to parents for payment of school fees where children who are attending pre-primary, primary or secondary school.

Tertiary Tuition – loan to students for the payment of fees at a college or university.

Tertiary Institution – typically small to medium loans made to a college or university for the purpose of improving infrastructure or the purchase of fixed assets. 

LEADING A SCHOOL DURING A PANDEMIC

MS MONICA NERWAN, RAJASTHAN, INDIA

Star Academy is led by Principal Monica Nerwan in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan, providing education to more than 1,000 students from K–12. Star Academy participates in EduQuality programming, which is designed to impact the quality of education children receive and fosters an enabling environment for learning.

Finding a way to teach students online during lockdown was Ms Nerwan’s greatest priority. Teachers have been providing content to parents via WhatsApp for primary school children and conducting Zoom classes for older students.

One of Ms Nerwan’s greatest concerns is the having to freeze teacher salaries. The school’s only revenue is school fees, which are collected in April at the beginning of the academic year. Most of the parents are daily wage earners or farmers who have lost their source of livelihood due to supply chain disruptions caused by the restrictions imposed to contain the spread of the virus. Many have returned to their home villages and will likely not come back until the economy recovers.

As part of the EduQuality program, Ms Nerwan has access to resources to help her navigate the management of a school through the COVID-19 crisis, as well as connection with other school leaders who face similar challenges during the pandemic.

CASE STUDY

COVID-19 TOOLKIT RESOURCES

In response to the crisis, the EduFinance Technical Assistance Team used an online platform to develop and remotely deliver e-learning modules for the ongoing professional development of staff of financial institutions that were providing education finance to parents, schools, tertiary students and tertiary educational institutions. While in-person training sessions were suspended during lockdown, the online modules provided an alternative training mode for the staff of financial institutions, including loan officers, risk and credit teams and branch managers. The e-learning content was designed to be engaging and interactive, using the core EduFinance training topics usually delivered in-person and redesigning them for online engagement, adding in additional topics to specifically consider during temporarily school closures. In addition, the team also created a toolkit of guidance and tools for financial institutions to use related to the necessary changes in lending operations during the crisis, from engaging a remote workforce to stress-testing the institution’s financial position and liquidity. Opportunity’s EduFinance team also developed a COVID-19 Toolkit in response to the crisis to help schools participating in the EduQuality program deal with the crisis and temporary school closures. The content and approach of the Toolkit draws on lessons learned from past crises, including the Ebola crisis in West Africa and the earthquake in Pakistan in 2005. Tools and support services included training materials for school leaders on how to preserve cash and manage their schools, and training materials for teachers on how to engage parents and pupils throughout the period of school closures.

Recorded podcasts and other content are being delivered via multiple digital channels. For example, Facebook is being used to share the Toolkit resources, enabling school leaders to collaborate and discuss the challenges they face. Facebook Live events have featured education specialists and school leaders to present on specific topics. School leaders are also reached using WhatsApp, SMS, and direct phone calls. The Facebook group in Pakistan had 144 schools listed as members in June 2020.

More recently, resources called ‘Pathways to Reopening’ have been developed to guide schools as they prepare to reopen, which has been translated into six languages to date, including Urdu. The content focusses on five domains that schools will need to consider as they plan to reopen:

• Business planning and financial management
• Clean and safe environmentconducive to learning
• Teaching and learning
• Staff engagement 
• Parent engagement

Each module has an accompanying podcast with country specific examples.

EDUCATION REPORT – MARCH 2021 (DATA TO DECEMBER 2020)

2020 was a challenging year for education, with schools temporarily closed due to the global pandemic and a drop in school fee collection, as well as a decline in financing of schools. UNESCO reported that, at the worst point, April 2020, school closures impacted 84 per cent of total enrolled learners across the globe. But a school closure in an environment of good internet access, a home computer and parents with a good education is a very different scenario from that faced by the children we aim to support.

Through Opportunity’s education program finance institutions, many loans were restructured to allow for delayed repayments. Many schools were encouraged to create and deliver lessons by remote means, including online classes, phone calls and physical visits during lockdowns. Schools continued to receive support during this challenging time, including in managing cashflow and help to prepare for reopening.

VOICE FROM THE PROGRAM

THE SPIRIT OF CHANGE

Bapak Namin’s neighbours mocked him for wanting a better life for his kids. “Sending your children to work and earn money for you,” they told him, “is better than you spending money on an expensive education for them.” But Bapak’s son Acu wants to be an engineer, a successful man who leaves poverty behind. His mother, Bu Acih, joined a loan group run by Opportunity’s partner KOMIDA and took out her first EduFinance loan 11 years ago.

The EduFinance loans have seen Acu all the way through primary and high school. His vocational high school is kilometres away. He has a motorcycle, but when it runs out of petrol he walks to school and back – he says he is determined to become a man for his family.

A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

In 2020, Acu’s last year of high school, the COVID-19 pandemic struck and his school closed for lockdown. Gone were the days of planning his future with his schoolmates. Instead, Acu had to study at home. The house is dark, with dirt floors and rooms divided by cloth, not walls, because Acu’s parents believed that their children’s education was more important than having a better home.

Like educators all over the world, Acu’s teachers did their best, sending material via email or posting it online with simple instructions. He found it a lot harder to understand the topics than when he was in the classroom, but Acu filled the gaps with YouTube videos. His school is still closed, and Acu is still studying in the dark, but there’s no doubt that because his parents have sacrificed to provide him with an education, he’s one of the lucky ones. He aims to see his family “happily cheerful” in future.

Bu Acih knows that the loans are helping to realise her son’s dreams. “Even though we are constrained by the economy,” she says, “seeing our children passionate about education is gratitude enough. We didn’t know how to get our step in life before, but KOMIDA is helping us reach our son’s future.”

Edufinance loans from Opportunity partner KOMIDA have allowed Acu Setiawan’s family to help him on his way to his dream of becoming an engineer.

STRATEGIC DEVELOPMENT GOAL (SDG)

This program contributes to achieving the fourth SDG goal – Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. This includes targets 4.1 Ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes; 4.3 Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university, and 4.8 Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent; inclusive and effective learning environments for all. While enormous improvements have been made in achieving universal primary education, progress has been more difficult in some developing regions due to high levels of poverty.

In 2020 1.6 billion children were affected by school closures in over 160 countries. At the end of December 2020 over 900 million children were still affected by partial or full school closures.

Even before the pandemic, approximately 258 million children were out of school – which is one in five school-age children globally. More alarmingly, in developing countries one in four girls is not in school.

Six out of 10 children and adolescents are not achieving a minimum level of proficiency in reading and maths. And yet the top 15 countries in the world that spend the most on education as a proportion of their budget are low- and middle-income countries. Clearly, there remains a gap in access to quality education.

Excluding high-income countries, the non-state education market share globally is over 25 per cent of the total education market. Opportunity’s education program focuses on increasing access to affordable private education by working with financial institutions to provide education loans to cover school fees and tertiary tuition fees. Opportunity’s education program also addresses gaps in education quality through the provision of a holistic three-year school development program to local affordable non-state schools.

Opportunity contributes to the achievement of SDG target 4.8 by addressing a lack of financial support for schools in low-resource environments. Opportunity provides technical assistance to socially-focused financial institutions to develop school improvement loans and tertiary institution loans to upgrade education facilities, including adding classrooms, textbooks and desks, installing running water or gender-separated bathrooms. These are all important provisions that keep students, especially girls, in school.

PARTNER PERFORMANCE

Overall, during the second half of 2020, financial institutions in Opportunity’s education program saw a decrease in loan volumes and value of disbursements of around 30 per cent.

INDIA

COVID-19 has acted as a catalyst for schools to use new e-learning platforms such as YouTube videos, real-time education apps, Zoom and Google Meet. The Indian government pushed for online classes when schools closed in March 2020. However, the reality for many low-income families in India is that they have no access to computers or stable internet connections, especially in rural areas where only 25 per cent of households have internet access. State governments responded by using television and radio to connect with students, especially in remote areas, but it is estimated that the pandemic has caused substantial learning loss.  

By the end of 2020, over 15,000 more families used loans to educate their children and over 4,000 affordable schools borrowed money to expand school premises, add more classrooms, purchase transportation and meet operational expenses. Most schools used the moratorium on microloans mandated by the government during COVID-19 to delay repayments due to a fall in income.

PAKISTAN

In Pakistan, one additional financial institution joined Opportunity’s EduFinance program in 2020. In total, all three institutions provided loans to 1,465 affordable schools to make improvements to their facilities. Some of the loans that were outstanding at the beginning of 2020 were repaid and the schools decided not to take out additional loans due to the operational uncertainty caused by the severe disruption COVID-19 restrictions had made to education and parents’ ability to pay school fees.

During the six months of school closures, 700,000 out of 1.5 million teachers lost their jobs.

To develop a deeper understanding of the impact of COVID-19 lockdown and school closures (March-September 2020), Opportunity surveyed 1,188 parents, 362 owners of non-state affordable schools and 252 teachers in Pakistan, which provided interesting insights into what to expect when schools reopened.

The most concerning finding in the survey was the disparity between parents’ attitude to sending girls (31 per cent) compared to boys (94 per cent) back to school in September in 2020 when schools reopened. On reopening, 50 per cent of 26 million school-aged children went back to school but of those who did not return 60 per cent were girls. We are now working with our financial institutions and the schools to find ways of encouraging girls in particular back into the classroom.

The institutions we work with in Pakistan have developed plans to address this disparity from 2021. These plans include those of one institution, Kashf Foundation, which has decided to only lend school improvement loans to schools with a minimum 40 per cent female student ratio and a commitment to increase that percentage, and plans to lend at least 50 per cent of its school improvement loans to schools led by a female.

INDONESIA

Armed with this market knowledge, Opportunity’s EduFinance technical assistance team supported three socially-focused financial institutions to develop and launch education lending portfolios in the second half of 2020. In total, they lent money to over 4,600 families to educate their children.

PHILIPPINES

Continuing to expand and engage mission-aligned financial institutions, Opportunity’s EduFinance team undertook a thorough analysis of the scale of the education finance market in the Philippines. Findings included that of 27.7 million school-aged children five per cent are out of school. Private schools make up 12.2 per cent of the market, and six per cent of the population live in extreme poverty (on less than US$1.90 a day).

Based on this market analysis, Opportunity engaged with a new financial institution in the Philippines to develop and launch school improvement loans to address the lack of financial support for schools in impoverished environments. So far, this new Edufinance institution has provided loans to five schools in the Philippines to fund improvements to their facilities.

EDUCATION PARTNER SUMMARY, ASIA

^{* Teacher loan: loan to a teacher for professional development, income generation or investment.
**Vocational loan: loan to a student for the payment of fees at a technical or vocational institution.} 

COVID-19 IMPACT ON EDUCATION IN RURAL INDIA

The COVID-19 pandemic with its panicked domestic migration and skyrocketing unemployment has had an enormous impact on rural households in India. Many affordable non-state schools risk permanent closure, with four out of five schools having collected less than 20 per cent of school fees since schools were closed as part of the strict nationwide lockdown in March 2020.

Starting in October 2020, Opportunity’s EduFinance technical assistance team surveyed 2,088 parents from rural households in India and 442 leaders of affordable non-state schools to assess the effect of the pandemic.

Over 85 per cent of respondents experienced reduced incomes during COVID-19. Most households had to draw down on savings or sell household assets like gold bracelets to meet their household expenses. One in four rural households has children engaged in some form of labour to help supplement falling income, raising the risk that these children will drop out of school permanently.

Almost 70 per cent of parents indicated that they would send their children to school as soon as schools reopened but many affordable private schools are under significant financial stress. Most schools have been closed for over seven months and 51 per cent of schools surveyed reported collecting no school fees in the previous three months. An inability to collect school fees during COVID-19 is a major source of concern for owners of affordable private schools in India. Only 15 per cent of school owners had other sources of income to sustain them during the pandemic.

Staff salaries have been reduced, a majority of schools have struggled to pay salaries regularly and on time and a large proportion have paid no teacher salaries at all. Forty six per cent of schools have laid off teachers. By providing loans to teachers for professional development, income generation or investment, Opportunity is enabling teachers to stay in the education sector through lean times, supporting more students to receive an education.

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^{1 Exchange rate US$1 = A$1.3}

Opportunity International US implements the Education program in 25 countries and along with Opportunity International Australia, is part of the broader Opportunity International Network. 

Opportunity International Australia provides funding to support the Education program in five countries in Asia. 

EDUCATION REPORT – OCTOBER 2021 (DATA TO JUNE 2021)

In the first half of 2021, loan disbursements improved after the dip and disruption of 2020.

In India, Opportunity EduFinance completed a strategic assessment of its model and opportunities. It found the 400,000 local, low-cost non-state schools need more capital investment and professional development training to continue providing quality education for the 128.2 million children attending those schools. An additional 32.5 million children are out of school and they could potentially benefit if the sector grew and their parents had access to a loan to cover school fees.

Research conducted by EduFinance and KPMG India is informing how barriers to finance and needs for professional development are being addressed in a new program model. The study surveyed 100 schools across nine states, 16 professional development organisations, as well as financial institutions and regional school associations.

The sector will need to undergo change to overcome the effects of COVID-19 (85 per cent schools globally closed at peak of pandemic).

In Pakistan, 16 million school children are enrolled in non-government schools (almost 35 percent of total enrollments). A further 19 million children remain out of school and low educational attainment is particularly the case for many girls. Over the past three years, EduFinance has established a strong network of financial institutions and other educational partners in Pakistan. A new EduQuality pilot was launched with All Pakistan Private Schools Federation using a train-the-trainers model to build the skills of 100 local staff.

In reference to COVID-19, we’ve seen that it’s exacerbated existing inequalities. I often hear people say about COVID-19 that the pandemic is an equalizer, but I couldn’t think of anything that’s further from the truth.” - Renée McAplin, Director EduQuality

Impact

Included in the total are 75 school improvement loans that were issued by newly participating financial institution Taleem Finance Company in Pakistan. In addition to school improvement loans, Taleem provides school fee loans to parents so they can send their children to school, as well as loans to tertiary institutions to improve the facilities. In Pakistan, 128 schools participated in the EduQuality Program.

Education Partner Summary, Asia

Strategic direction

COVID-19 is often described as both a health crisis and an economic crisis but it is also an education crisis, especially for the poorest and most vulnerable children. COVID-19 resulted in full or partial school closures that affected two in three students one year into the crisis. An estimated 101 million more children than before the pandemic failed to demonstrate basic reading skills and nearly two thirds of the children falling behind live in Asia. The longer students miss school the higher the likelihood that they may never return, putting them at increased risk of child labour and child marriage.¹

At the same time, Governments have less funding available for education since the start of the pandemic making a focus on non-state low-fee schools even more important in efforts to get students back on track after a catastrophic year for education. 

The financial service sector creates value for customers by solving monetary challenges in their lives and the pandemic has clearly created more challenges for many clients. For education finance, this has created an environment for innovation in the two most prominent loan products used globally: school improvement loans and school fee loans.

It has also increased the urgency to explore financing beyond these options and diversify products to cater for the entire ecosystem by offering a full suite of financial services.

We have seen an increased emphasis on recognising and addressing the importance of teachers, schools and students having access to data, digital devices and knowledge of how to use them. When schools reopen and-face to-face learning resumes, the demand for e-learning is expected to continue. Technology may be able fill learning gaps.

Future strategy includes: 

• New products / diversification
• Digitisation
• Training
• Pilot evaluations
• Partnerships
• Grants / CSR
• Research

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^{1 The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021 https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2021/The-Sustainable-Development-Goals-Report-2021.pdf}

Opportunity International US implements the Education Program in 25 countries and along with Opportunity Australia, is part of the broader Opportunity International Network.

Opportunity Australia provides funding to support the Education Program in five countries in Asia.