Nigeria and the World Bank have agreed to restructure the $500m HOPE for Quality Basic Education for All programme earlier approved for the country, last year, with more

states now to benefit.

The new structuring formula sees a cut in the funding allocations tied to the construction of new classrooms, while expanding the number of states eligible for the targeted interventions under the project.

A World Bank restructuring paper, dated May 20, 2026, and published on the lender’s website, Thursday, showed that the allocation for the creation of 13,000 new classrooms under the programme was significantly reduced following changes in grant financing from the Global Partnership for Education.

World Bank’s HOPE-Education programme aims to improve foundational learning outcomes, increase access to basic education and enhance education systems in participating states in the country.

The programme became effective on February 26, 2026, and the World Bank said implementation was already making ‘early progress.’

The bank explained that the new agreement was necessitated by a sharp reduction in Nigeria’s GPE System Transformation Grant allocation.

“These changes stem from a reduction in the total allocation for Nigeria’s GPE STG funding from $107.59m to $53.975m,” the bank disclosed.

According to the World Bank, the funding programme’s original arrangement had split the GPE funding between the World Bank and the United Nations Children’s Fund, but the revised financing structure transferred the entire reduced grant allocation to the World Bank-managed HOPE-Education programme.

“Originally, co-grant agents, the World Bank and the United Nations Children’s Fund, were selected to each manage half of the initial STG funding allocation. However, with the reduced GPE financing, the Government of Nigeria proposed that the reduced allocation be managed entirely by the World Bank through HOPE-Education,” it explained.

The World Bank Board had on March 31, 2025, approved the programme which is to be financed through a $500m International Development Association (IDA) credit and a $52.18m GPE grant.

The restructuring paper showed that the total allocation under DLI 4, which covers “Number of new primary classrooms created through community participation,” was reduced from $5.7m to $2.55m.

Specifically, the allocation for government-community agreements to support classroom construction in 15 states was cut from $500,000 to $300,000, while the allocation for the construction of 13,000 classrooms dropped from $5.2m to $2.25m.

However, regardless of the reduction in funding allocations, the bank assured that the overall programme target of creating 13,000 classrooms remained unchanged in the updated results framework contained in the report.

The World Bank said there would be no change to the programme’s development objective, closing date, or institutional arrangements.

“There are no changes to the Program Development Objective, closing date, or institutional arrangements. This is the first restructuring of the operation,” the bank clarified.

Under the revised arrangement, the number of states eligible for targeted interventions under Results Area 1 was expanded from three to six with the addition of Abia, Bauchi, and Kwara states.

The updated GPE-financed states are Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bauchi, Kebbi, Kwara, and Lagos. The restructuring also altered funding allocations across several disbursement-linked indicators and results covering teaching and learning materials, teacher mentoring, school grants, literacy assessments, and annual school census reporting.

Under DLI 1, which focuses on the availability of teaching and learning materials, two earlier allocations were removed and replaced with new targets tied specifically to GPE-supported states.

A new $7.419m allocation was introduced for ensuring that 80 per cent of public primary schools in GPE states have sufficient teaching and learning materials for Grades 1 to 3, while another $3.569m was added for Grades 4 to 6.

The total allocation under DLI 2, which focuses on improving structured pedagogy practices among teachers, was reduced from $14.866m to $12.664m after some allocations were adjusted downward and one performance indicator was removed entirely.

Similarly, allocations under DLI 3 covering literacy and numeracy proficiency were reduced from $7.934m to $5.06m after the removal of a $3.9m allocation tied to increasing the percentage of children proficient in literacy and numeracy in IDA states.

Funding tied to out-of-school children under DLI 5 also declined from $1.733m to $1.283m. However, allocations for annual school grants under DLI 7 increased significantly from $4.73m to $7.865m, while allocations tied to annual school census reporting under DLI 8 rose from $4.45m to $5.676m.

The lender said the changes would also require modifications to the verification protocol for GPE-supported states, while the existing verification process for IDA-financed states would remain unchanged.