The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved a $100 million loan that will allow more young Guatemalans to complete a high-quality secondary education and bolster the country’s human capital.

The initiative will benefit approximately 231,000 students ages 12 to 20 by expanding and enhancing existing school infrastructure, providing access to new digital technologies, and training teachers, and boosting their professionalism. The program will focus on rural and marginalized urban areas with low secondary school coverage.

Guatemala’s school system currently has capacity to serve 49.2 percent of the country’s middle school-aged students and 26.4 percent of its high school-aged students. There are also major geographical discrepancies in educational coverage, which is 62.4 percent in cities but 33.7 percent in Guatemala’s largely indigenous rural areas.

This loan aims to expand secondary school coverage with 500 new classrooms throughout the country and improve the learning environment by refurbishing 3,300 schools. A portion of the new school infrastructure will be ecologically efficient and adapted to climate change, since it will involve installing photovoltaic systems in off-grid areas.

The loan will provide access to 1,400,000 educational resources like textbooks, printed and digital materials, and audiobooks for secondary students and teachers. These resources will include bilingual and intercultural materials for indigenous students, as well as others tailored to students with learning disabilities. The initiative will also equip schools with 3,800 technology kits with items such as servers, projectors and tablets with offline content.

The program will train 7,600 teachers on using these resources and help boost the professionalism of 5,500 teachers through the Ministry of Education’s Academic Program for Professional Teacher Development.

The $100 million IDB loan will be disbursed over a five-year period. It has a 6.6-year grace period and an interest rate based on the secured overnight financing rate (SOFR).