World Bank set to approve $300 million for Ghana’s education infrastructure
The World Bank is expected to formally approve a US$300 million facility for Ghana’s secondary education sector on June 16, Education Minister Haruna Iddrisu has confirmed. The funding will support the Secondary Education Transformation for Access, Relevance and Results for Jobs (STARR-J) programme, the largest single World Bank allocation to Ghana’s education sector in the institution’s history.
The announcement was made by Minister Iddrisu during a visit by World Bank Group Managing Director and Chief Knowledge Officer Paschal Donohoe to schools in Accra in March. The $300 million commitment nearly doubles the $180 million initially discussed at the IMF/World Bank Spring Meetings in 2025.
Under STARR-J, 30 Category C senior high schools will be upgraded to Category B, and 20 Category B schools elevated to Category A, while infrastructure at existing Category A schools will be expanded. The programme also targets the rehabilitation of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions and aims to strengthen links between education and employment.
President John Mahama has said the initiative will help end Ghana’s double-track school system, which rotates student cohorts due to overcrowding, by 2027. At its peak in 2018, 58 percent of nearly 700 secondary schools operated under the double-track arrangement; that figure currently stands at 38 percent.
The STARR-J project builds on the World Bank’s earlier Ghana Accountability for Learning Outcomes Project (GALOP), which trained over 70,000 teachers and benefited more than 3.1 million students between 2019 and 2025.
The World Bank board is scheduled to vote on the approval on June 16, 2026.
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