PESHAWAR, Dec 3: The World Bank has recommended that the NWFP government should establish an Education Sector Reforms Unit (ESRU) in the department of schools and literacy to ensure proper planning, monitoring and implementation of the reforms agreed with the bank for improving quality of education in the province, sources say.

The sources told Dawn that the ESRU project to be launched under the Development Policy Credit of the World Bank was likely to be made functional by January, for which the Frontier government had allocated Rs1.923 million in the Annual Development Programme for 2006-7.

Initially, the unit would be made operational for three years, 2007-9, that could cost a total of Rs44.292million, the sources said.However, they said, extension in project's tenure would be based on its performance and nit might become an integral part of the education department in future.

The project aims at achieving the goals of various plans launched by the federal government under the National Education Policy, Education Sector Reforms and Poverty Reduction Strategy.

The sources said the NWFP government would fund the project under the World Bank loan and professional staff would be recruited for planning, implementation and monitoring of various programmes.

The unit will carry out statistical analysis of the collected data.