Kampala — Promoting Equality in African Schools (PEAS), a project under the public-private partnership with the Ugandan government has been selected as one of the finalists of the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE).

Wise announced the names of 14 projects selected as the 2013 WISE Awards Finalists. PEAS currently has 21 innovative secondary schools in Uganda that reach nearly 8,000 young people and has launched a mobile, solar classroom to provide access to technology and global best practices in education.

"We are honoured to have been named a WISE Award Finalist," said PEAS CEO John Rendel. "This is global recognition of our efforts to expand access to high-quality secondary education across Uganda through new approaches and technology."

Hailing from around the globe, the selected projects represent the world's best work in education by non-governmental organizations, charity groups, cultural institutions and the private sector and demonstrate real-world solutions to today's most difficult education challenges.

Created by WISE in 2009, the WISE Awards program recognizes innovative approaches to solving real-world obstacles to education, with the objective of replicating these approaches in other parts of the world.

In Uganda, PEAS is the result of a unique public-private partnership with the Ugandan government that makes high-quality secondary education possible for families at all income levels. The model works to ensure schools are self-sustaining through government funds, school fees and private contributions in less than 12 months. This despite the fact that schools receive on average 70% less government funding than other equivalent schools.

Today in Uganda only 20 per cent of the country's villages have secondary schools, although 80 per cent have schools at the primary level. PEAS seeks to unlock the potential of Africa by delivering equal access to affordable, quality secondary education is looking at creating 10,000 new secondary school places across Sub-Saharan Africa by 2017. They have developed a mobile, solar education model that provides access to new technology in rural areas.

H.E. Sheikh Abdulla bin Ali Al-Thani, Ph.D., Chairman of WISE and Chairman of the WISE Awards Jury states: "This year's WISE Awards Finalist projects are truly inspiring in their creativity and commitment to addressing challenges in education. The projects are from all over the world and are extremely diverse, yet the obstacles they are working to overcome can be found in many places and relate to some of the most difficult problems facing education today.

Of the fourteen finalists, a jury of international education experts will choose six winning projects which will be announced in September and showcased at the 2013 WISE Summit in Doha, taking place October 29-31, 2013 and will receive $20,000 (app Ush 52 million).