The World Bank has granted the Jordanian government $200 million towards helping expand early childhood education and to improve teaching and learning conditions for Jordanian and Syrian refugee children.

The grant comes as part of the Education Reform Support Program, which was approved on Tuesday by the World Bank Group’s Board of Directors.

The money is expected to benefit around 700,000 Jordanian and Syrian refugee children. In addition, it will help train more than 30,000 teachers across the Kingdom.

“Over the last two decades, Jordan made impressive strides in terms of school access, attainment and enrolment rates,” the World Bank said in a statement on their website.

Despite the improvements witnessed in the past few years, the education system in Jordan is still facing some challenges, such as low access to quality early childhood education, the World Bank has said.

This is a result of the influx of Syrian refugees, which has constrained Jordan’s ability to maintain and improve the quality of its school education.

Official statistics have shown that more than 126,000 Syrian refugee children were enrolled in Jordanian state schools last year, while 80,000 were out of school, for different reasons, including the lack of the necessary identification documents.

However, the government has recently approved a new law allowing Syrian refugees who do not possess the required documents to enroll in state schools, The Jordan Times reported.

“The Government of Jordan realized early on that keeping Syrian refugee children out of school would have detrimental impacts in the long-term on peace, stability and economic development,” said Saroj Kumar Jha, the World Bank Mashreq Regional Director.