China - Third Basic Education Project

Document of The World Bank FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Report No. P-6770-CHA MEMORANDUM AND RECOMMENDATION OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION TO THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS ON A PROPOSED CREDIT OF SDR 67.3 MILLION TO THE PEOPLES'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA FOR A THIRD BASIC EDUCATION PROJECT February 23, 1996 This document has a restricted distribution and may be used by recipients only in the perfornance of their official duties. Its contents may not otherwise be disclosed without World Bank authorization.  CURRENCY EQUIVALENTS (As of December 12, 1995) Currency Name = Renminbi Currency Unit= Yuan (Y) $1.00=Y 8.3 Y 1.00=$0.119 FISCAL YEAR January 1 - December 31 ACADEMIC YEAR September 1 - August 31 WEIGHTS AND MEASURES Metric System ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS CAS - Country Assistance Strategy CEP - Chinese Experts Panel FILO - Foreign Investment and Loan Office ICB - International Competitive Bidding IDA - International Development Association MIS - Management Information System NCB - National Competitive Bidding SDR - Special Drawing Right SEdC - State Education Commission GLOSSARY Province-China is divided into provinces, autonomous regions and province-level municipalities. In this report "province" refers to any of these, as appropriate.  FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY CHINA THIRD BASIC EDUCATION PROJECT CREDIT AND PROJECT SUMMARY Borrower: People's Republic of China Implementing Agency: State Education Commission (SEdC) Beneficiaries: SEdC and 124 poverty counties in seven provinces (Anhui, Fujian, Gansu, Hebei, Henan, Jilin, Qinghai) Poverty: Program of Targeted Interventions Amount: SDR 67.3 million ($100 million equivalent) Terms: Standard IDA, with 35 years' maturity, and 10 years' grace Commitment Fee: 0.50 percent on undisbursed credit balances, beginning 60 days after signing, less any waiver Financing Plan: See Schedule A Economic Rate of Return: Not applicable Staff Appraisal Report: Report No. 15099-CHA Maps: IBRD 27694, 27695, 27696, 27697, 27698, 27699, 27700 Project ID Number: CN-PE-36950 This document has a restricted distribution and may be used by recipients only in the performance of their official duties. Its contents may not otherwise be disclosed without World Bank authorization.   MEMORANDUM AND RECOMMENDATION OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION TO THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTORS ON A PROPOSED CREDIT TO THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA FOR A THIRD BASIC EDUCATION PROJECT 1. I submit for your approval the following memorandum and recommendation on a proposed credit to the People's Republic of China for SDR 67.3 million, the equivalent of $100 million, on standard IDA terms with a maturity of 35 years, to help finance the Third Basic Education Project. The Government of China will allocate the credit proceeds to the project provinces for 20 years, including a 5-year grace period, at a fixed annual interest rate of 1.2 percent. The provinces would bear the foreign exchange risk. 2. Background. Compared with other developing countries, China's success in providing comprehensive basic education to its population has been remarkable. In 1994, enrollment rates for the first nine years of schooling were reportedly 98.4 percent of the 6-11 age cohort enrolled in primary education, and more than 60 percent of the 12-15 age cohort in lower secondary schools. Of primary graduates, about 82 percent went on to secondary schools (regular or vocational). Almost 98 percent of all school-age girls were enrolled in primary education. A significant consequence of these high enrollment figures is the high literacy rates: 80 percent for those above 15 years of age and about 93 percent among those between 15 and 25 yeaxs of age. The projected figures for 2000 are 134 million pupils at primary level and 70 million at lower secondary level. 3. Global figures, though indicative of substantial progress, tend to mask disparities in basic education development. There are noticeable imbalances in the availability of educational services between the economically advanced and underdeveloped regions due to the relatively high portion of educational expenditures funded at the local level. Generally, urban and coastal areas have achieved the goal of nine-year basic education but many poor, sparsely-populated and remote areas have not reached primary education targets, sometimes by a significant extent. In China's 592 nationally designated poverty counties, where the average annual rural income of Y 400 in 1993 was less than half of the national rural average, schooling is marked by poor attendance and high repetition and dropout rates. Government poverty reduction programs targeted at these counties therefore include educational improvement. 4. The Government's overall approach to education in poor areas is to improve efficiency through reduction of high repetition and dropout rates, improved books for basic education, training of teachers to use new text materials and provision of more preservice and improved inservice training for teachers. In addition, the Government hopes to encourage equity by providing subsidies to economically underdeveloped areas so that they may introduce compulsory education and to encourage the transfer of funds from provincial to local governments. The project will support the Government's efforts to make primary education universal by the year 2000 by putting more educational inputs  - 2 - into teaching points,' increasing the enrollment in complete schools, expanding multigrade and multisubject teaching in rural areas and reducing dropout rates of minority children through improved bilingual educational programs. 5. The project would be implemented in 124 counties in Anhui, Fujian, Gansu, Henan, Hebei, Jilin and Qinghai Provinces. The main criteria used in selecting the provinces were the number of poor counties [counties identified as being National Poor Counties in the State Council's "National 8-7 Poverty Reduction Plan (1994-2000)"] in the province, level of teacher qualifications, percentage of minority population, primary school completion rate, and girls' enrollment. The main criteria used in selecting project counties were: inclusion on the national or provincial list of poor counties; relative concentration of minority population among overall county population; poverty indicators such as rural income per capita, public expenditure for education as a percentage of provincial expenditure and books per pupil at primary level; and teaching and management needs such as percentages of repetition, primary enrollment, and girls' enrollment, transition rate from primary to secondary education and percentage of qualified teachers. 6. Minority nationalities and girls are at a particular disadvantage in many of the poor areas. China has 55 minority nationalities totaling 91.2 million people and constituting 8 percent of the population. Areas inhabited by these minorities cover 64 percent of the country. There are 80 spoken languages and over 30 writing systems used by the minority nationalities. In areas populated by minority nationalities, economic and education levels are lower than the national average. In a study of school-age children in 25 minority counties conducted by the State Education Commission (SEdC), the gross enrollment rate was 20 percentage points lower than the national mean, with female enrollment being particularly low. In addition to the characteristics of education in poor areas, education of minority nationalities suffers from shortages in teaching materials and adequately trained teachers. Bilingual education,2 regarded as instrumental to promoting minority nationalities to advance to upper and postsecondary education, also suffers from various shortcomings: a shortage of qualified teachers; unsatisfactory instructional materials, and insufficient attention and research in the pedagogical, linguistic, psychological and curriculum aspects of bilingual education. Components of the proposed project such as increased provision of bilingual teacher training, procurement of tent schools, increased emphasis on local content in minority-language textbooks, training of minority headmasters and student assistance programs have been especially designed for the small number of minority children (about 7 percent of the total) in the project. Teaching points are community-supported incomplete primary schools that generally have one or two grades only, a single teacher and are located in villages. They are generally found in the poorest sections of the countryside. 2 Bilingual education is currently employed by 24 minority nationalities.  - 3 - 7. Among the deprived sections of the population, girls and women continue to be more disadvantaged. Facilities for basic education are equally available for boys and girls, yet there is a significantly lower level of utilization of facilities by girls and women. Almost half the rural population is illiterate or semiliterate, and women make up 70 percent of this number. Factors that contribute to these problems are related to: (a) high direct and indirect costs of schooling; (b) a nonsupportive learning environment; (c) limited access; and (d) low expectations for continuing education and employment. The proposed project will specifically advance female education by: (a) maintaining a dialogue with educational officials at the national, provincial and county leveis on important policy issues (through project supported studies, project supervision and national seminars); (b) improving the learning environment (through gender-sensitive teacher/administrative training, a special program of supporting female principals, and experiments with single-sex schools); (c) expanding access, especially in the poorer and more remote rural areas (through such programs as distribution of free textbooks to girls); and (d) fostering innovation and experimentation to promote female education within a local context. 8. Project Objectives. The project would: (a) support the attainment of universal primary education and expansion of coverage of lower secondary education in poor and minority areas, and (b) build stronger institutions responsible for education delivery. The project would contribute to the Government's poverty reduction efforts by focusing on education, and thus the income earning potential of nearly 5 million children in some of the poorer counties in China. The project will have a direct impact on approximately 46,000 schools and will provide varying lengths of training for approximately 138,000 teachers and education managers. 9. Project Description. The project would comprise three components. Under the institutional component the project would finance renovation, rehabilitation, and some new construction of primary and lower secondary schools, furniture, instructional equipment and library books; and staff upgrading. Classroom teachers, school principals, and local education administrators would receive training that would allow them to provide better instruction in and leadership of education institutions at the provincial, county and village levels. 10. The management improvement component will develop management capabilities for the education system at the national, provincial and institutional levels through staff training, the provision of equipment and expert services. It will include three subcomponents: (a) the training of local education management authorities; (b) the training of local project implementation authorities; and (c) the development of an education management information system (MIS). The central component will: (a) support the dissemination program which would focus on the documentation, dissemination, piloting and evaluation of good results of previous educational experiments; (b) support a pupil learning achievement study; (c) provide national-level coordination for a student assistance program and (d) support a Chinese Experts Panel (CEP) which will coordinate and oversee the central component activities in cooperation  with the provinces and SEdC. This component will also support national-level capacity building and the coordination of certain technical assistance activities. The student assessment study, dissemination program and the student assistance program will in part be carried out at the provincial level. 11. The project is estimated to cost about $191.8 million. The provincial and county governments are expect to provided $91.8 million and IDA about $100 million (52 percent of total project costs.) To facilitate rapid project startup, retroactive financing of up to 10 percent of the credit amount ($10 million equivalent) is recommended to cover payments already made under the project starting from December 1, 1995 for training activities and February 15, 1996 for civil works contracts. A breakdown of project costs and the financing plan are shown in Schedule A. Amounts and methods of procurement and disbursement, and the disbursement schedule are shown in Schedule B. A timetable of key project processing events and the status of Bank Group operations in the country are presented in Schedules C and D, respectively. Maps are also attached. The Staff Appraisal Report, No. 15099-CHA, dated February 23, 1996, is being distributed separately. 12. Project Implementation. SEdC will provide overall project coordination. And, through the central component, it will implement national level project activities in which each province has a shared involvement, that is, national-level training, foreign study tours and overseas training, research studies and the dissemination program. All national- level activities will be implemented by the Foreign Investment and Loan Office (FILO) and other appropriate SEdC technical departments, using technical and administrative resources that are familiar to the Association and have proved satisfactory in the past. FILO was formed in 1981 and has extensive experience in the technical aspects of Bank Group project execution. 13. Since the bulk of project activities will take place in the provinces, the main implementation responsibilities will be assumed by provincial-level FILOs, headed by the Vice Commissioners of the respective Provincial Education Commissions, and staffed with officials familiar with education planning and management, financial management and accounting, civil works and equipment procurement. A similar structure has been repeated at the county level. The provincial FILOs will be responsible for overseeing the activities of the county FILOs and arranging for the necessary training. This model has worked in the implementation of the Education Development in Poor Provinces Project (Cr. 2339-CHA) and Basic Education in Poor and Minority Areas Project (Cr. 2651- CHA). 14. Project Sustainability. The project will partially finance school-based activities at the village, township, county and provincial level, activities that are embedded within and support the key national education policy of achieving universal nine-year education by the year 2000. The moderate level of IDA financing for the project (approximately 52 percent) and the annual amounts of provincial and county counterpart funding necessary for the project as a ratio of the actual 1995 provincial and county education budgets (0.89  -5 - and 3.3 percent, respectively, on average) increase the chances for both sustainability and affordability of the project activities. Even during 1997, when the highest annual disbursements can be expected (i.e., 35 percent of total disbursement), average county- level counterpart funding will only be 4.7 percent of the projected 1997 education budgets. Built into the project are maintenance costs for schools, classrooms and equipment to be procured under the project, as well as technical assistance and training to develop a planning-enhancing MIS system. The training of approximately 138,000 teachers and school managers builds and strengthens existing and new human resource capacity, which will remain in place long after the end of the project. 15. The recurrent cost implications of the project investment have been studied by the Borrower and the costs have been found to be a small percentage (projected 0.5 percent) of the provincial-level total recurrent costs projected for 2001. 16. Lessons Learned from Previous Bank Group Operations. Valuable lessons have been learned from the development and early implementation of the first two basic education projects, on which the design of the proposed project is based. The lessons include: (a) projects are better designed and implemented when they concentrate on a reduced number of provinces, and when provincial and county authorities are involved in their design; (b) provincial-level counterpart funding must be assured from the beginning of the project, available early and sufficient to provide necessary start-up funds for county and village civil works that account for a large percentage of the first half of project disbursements in such education projects; (c) the project oversight and policy guidance role of a CEP is critical in making minor but necessary adjustments in project design, advising Association supervision missions, and resolving implementation problems at the provincial and subprovincial levels; (d) Provincial Education Commissions should concentrate less on quantitative targets and more on improving the quality of the project; (e) provinces have tended to overrely on early and heavy use of force account for small civil works projects in locations where National Competitive Bidding procurement procedures would have been more appropriate and economical; (f) the Association and the Government need to work together in the evaluation of education reforms; and (g) national coordination of technical assistance, high-level training, collection of educational and project indicators, and dissemination of lessons learned are necessary to achieve efficiencies of scale, and countrywide coherence in the development and expression of education policy and national standards. 17. The proposed project design benefited from the above lessons by incorporating the following: (a) a joint Association/Borrower training course on project design and monitorable indicators for individuals from the preparation and implementing agencies was carried out in Washington, D.C. early in project preparation; (b) the Borrower and provincial education authorities have been responsible for organizing the participation of stakeholders at the provincial and county levels to develop proposals based on local identification of issues and optimal solutions; (c) a CEP has been used to assist in the design of project components and will be used during project implementation to provide ongoing high-level professional monitoring of project implementation; (d) a county  - 6 - financing study and household survey have been initiated to better understand the household burden of education; and (e) the central component aims at supporting dissemination of previous IDA- and UNICEF-supported, action-oriented research programs that identify innovative approaches to improving access to education for girls, minorities and poor children. 18. Rationale for Bank Group Involvement. The proposed operation is consistent with the Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) discussed by the Board on June 1, 1995. For the social sectors the CAS calls for priority to be given to the problems of the poorest areas, including basic education and education for girls. Under the project, the Association would be deepening its support for China's efforts in improving basic education in poor and remote areas, including those inhabited by minority nationalities. The project would be in line with IDA's report "China: Strategies for Reducing Poverty in the 1990s" (Report No. 10409-CHA, 1992), which identified investment in human capital, in particular targeted interventions to the poor and vulnerable, as a key component of the poverty alleviation efforts leading to healthier and smaller families, higher adoption rates of new agricultural technology, and increased access to alternative off-farm employment. The project also incorporates the Association's concerns for improving the status of women in the development process by supporting targeted research activities and consequent interventions to increase girls' enrollments, especially in minority areas. 19. Agreed Actions. The principle assurances obtained at negotiations concerned: (a) terms of credit allocations to the provinces; (b) procedures for project monitoring and evaluation in accordance with indicators acceptable to the Association, and annual reporting to the Association by April 1; (c) implementation of the national-level training program in accordance with an action plan acceptable to the Association; and (d) submission to the Association of a mid-term report by October 31, 1998. 20. The provinces would be required under Project Implementation Arrangements with the Central Government to: (a) allocate the Credit to the project counties, as far as possible on a grant basis, otherwise on terms at least as favorable as the terms on which the province receives the funds from the national government; (b) carry out annual Education Program action plans, which would be previously submitted to and found acceptable to the Association; (c) carry out, monitor and report on action plans for nonproject-supported counties in Hebei, Anhui and Gansu to ensure the continued achievement of acceptable educational targets for those counties during the implementation of the project; and (d) ensure adequate project monitoring. As a condition of Credit effectiveness, Project Implementation Arrangements signed by the Borrower and the participating provinces would be submitted to the Association. 21. Program Objective Categories. No negative environmental impact from the project is foreseen (the project is rated a "C"). Likewise, no resettlement or land acquisition is foreseen in that all civil works will be rehabilitation, rebuilding or repair of schools on existing school sites. Improved access to and quality of basic education will  -7 - enhance the ability of the poor to take advantage of the opportunities presented by economic growth, either in their own counties or areas of faster economic development. Improved overall access to education will increase girls' enrollments. The project, through its targeted training programs, will increase the numbers of women teachers and principals and thus encourage enrollment and retention of girls in schools. It has been shown that improved quality of education in general also increases the retention of girls, with resultant economic and social benefits. Special attention has been paid, through a participatory process, to design the project so as to ensure that the minority beneficiaries fully benefit under the project in accordance with the requirements of the Bank Group's Operational Directive 4.20. 22. Participatory Approach. Based on experience with the previous projects, SEdC organized three working groups which were instrumental in project preparation and will be used in project implementation. These groups are: (a) a Project Working Group, comprising relevant working-level staff from throughout SEdC, which organized all project preparatory activities; (b) a Project Leading Group, comprising SEdC department directors, which is responsible for providing guidance and coordination and resolving major implementation issues that may arise; and (c) the CEP, comprising nine non-SEdC experts specializing in basic education, minority/bilingual education, teacher training, curriculum development, civil works, equipment and education management, which advised and made suggestions on project preparation. Directors of project implementation units from provinces in the earlier basic education project are members of the Project Working Group to ensure continuous input into the development of the programs in the project-supported provinces as well as training of new project implementation staff. 23. SEdC organized a project preparation stakeholder meeting for the seven proposed provinces as well as national and provincial financial and planning agencies. This initial organization meeting determined the basic project design, outlined the project preparation process and provided each of the provinces with a project proposal outline and financing format derived from the preparation of the earlier basic education project. First drafts of the provincial proposals were reviewed by SEdC and the Association in Washington when SEdC participated in three weeks of training in project design. 24. During project preparation, Association staff systematically interviewed selected parents, grandparents and village authorities, most of whom were minorities, from some 17 townships and villages in poor counties of Qinghai and Gansu Provinces to learn local reaction to and gather additional information for the tentative project design. The findings from the interviews can be summarized as follows: (a) only by acquiring literacy and numeracy skills will the children be able to escape the poverty with which their parents/grandparents have had to live; (b) basic education in rural poor areas is primarily to acquire skills necessary to contribute to the local economy and secondarily to provide an educational foundation for higher education; (c) mastery of national language is essential to enable school-leavers to move from poverty areas to where the jobs are; (d) initial instruction in the mother language is important to retain awareness of minority  -8- culture and to be able to talk to family members; (e) the project should place highest emphasis on eliminating dangerous schools and providing good new classrooms; (f) increasing teachers' qualifications, especially in bilingual education skills, is important; (g) of lesser importance is the provision of school furniture and teaching equipment; (h) the local curriculum should include local history and stories; and (i) education of girls is important so that they can learn life skills that enable them to contribute to the local economy. These interviews were instrumental in shaping the package of investments targeted at the minority children in Qinghai, Gansu and Hebei. 25. Financial Analysis. Analysis of the provincial feasibility reports for this project indicates that there are funding needs in the project county educational budgets between the estimates to achieve nine-year compulsory education by the year 2000 and the estimated total domestic funding available to these counties during 1996-2000. These gaps range between $5.5 million and $30.1 million per province. With the project, these financing gaps would be reduced to a range between $0.5 million and $12.0 million per province or by 77 percent on average for each province. The project will cover 100 percent of the gaps for the small number of nationally-listed poverty counties in Fujian and Jilin Provinces, with differing percentages of counties covered in other provinces. SEdC intends to increase the nonrecurrent budget investments in all provinces with nationally-listed poverty counties so that these provinces can achieve universal nine-year education by the year 2000 and this should, therefore, fill the financing gaps that the project cannot cover. With this project, SEdC will have completed these investments for Fujian and Jilin and made substantial investments to the other five provinces in the project. 26. Benefits. The project is expected to benefit about 5 million of the poorest school children in some of the economically more disadvantaged counties of some of China's poorer provinces. It will significantly expand basic education among the poor, especially in the remote areas inhabited by minority nationalities. Provision of education to remote and rural areas not only helps to create opportunities for rural development but also helps to provide the skills necessary to participate in the economic growth in township and urban centers. It would also improve school attendance of female students. Minority nationalities students will be better prepared to participate in Chinese schools in the upper and postsecondary levels. Furthermore, the project includes specific interventions designed to improve planning and management capacity of the central, provincial and county governments to prepare and implement similar comprehensive projects and to replicate them in other parts of the country. The project will have a direct impact on between a third and all of the schools and children in 124 counties and approximately 46,000 schools, depending on the county, and will provide varying lengths of training for approximately 138,000 teachers and education managers. 27. Risks. There are three main risks in this project. First, three of the project provinces (Hlebei, Gansu and Anhui) have other poor counties not covered by the project and may not ensure that the population in these counties would benefit from improved access to and quality of basic education. To deal with this, these project provinces will be  -9- required to implement acceptable action plans with monitorable indicators to ensure that education achievements in nonproject poor counties will not deteriorate during project implementation. Second, the central, provincial and county officials may be unable to oversee the implementation of the project activities. Cognizant of this risk, management strengthening at all three levels is a principal activity of the project. Additionally, lessons learned from implementing the previous Association-supported basir education projects will be included in the training of provincial and county-level implementation units for this project. Finally, there may be inadequate commitment on the part of SEdC, project provinces and counties, which may result in insufficient counterpart funding to match Association credits. However, SEdC has indicated that it is willing to allocate sufficient amounts of its own annual budgetary allocation for poor counties to the seven project provinces to assure adequate counterpart funding. Additionally, implementation experience of the previous education projects and the strong provincial and county-level work necessary to develop the current project indicate that the risk is not excessive. 28. Recommendation. I am satisfied that the proposed credit would comply with the Articles of Agreement of the Association and recommend that the Executive Directors approve the proposed credit. James D. Wolfensohn President Attachments Washington, D.C. February 23, 1996   - 10 - Schedule A CHINA THIRD BASIC EDUCATION PROJECT ESTIMATED COSTS AND FINANCING PLAN ($ million) Local Foreign Total Estimated Costs Civil Works 76.4 18.5 94.9 Furniture 6.4 0.0 6.4 Equipment Equipment School 17.5 5.0 22.5 Equipment MIS 0.2 0.8 1.0 Subtotal Equipment 17.7 5.8 23.5 Books 7.3 0.0 7.3 Technical Assistance Teacher Training 11.4 0.0 11.4 Project Management Training 0.2 0.0 0.2 National Technical Assistance 0.0 0.3 0.3 Study Tours 0.0 0.3 0.3 Subtotal Technical Assistance 11.6 0.6 12.2 National-Level Activities 4.0 0.1 4.1 Base Costs 123.4 25.0 148.4 Physical contingencies 12.3 2.6 14.9 Price contingencies 27.2 1.3 28.5 Total Project Costs 162.9 28.9 191.8 Financing Plan Chinese Government Sources 91.8 - 91.8 IDA 71.2 28.8 100.0 Total 163.0 28.8 191.8   - 11 - Schedule B Page 1 CHINA THIRD BASIC EDUCATION PROJECT SUMMARY OF PROPOSED PROCUREMENT ARRANGEMENTS /a ($ million) Procurement Method Project Element NCB Others Total Civil Works 92.7 28.0 120.7 (52.5) (15.7) (68.2) Goods 43.7 5.7 49.4 (19.9) (2.6) (22.5) Training - 15.9 15.9 (6.9) (6.9) Consultant Services - 5.8 5.8 (2.4) (2.4) Total 136.4 55.4 191.8 (72.4) (27.6) (100.0) Notes: (1) Figures in parenthesis are the amounts financed by IDA. (2) Others includes: international and national shopping, force account, and consulting services. (3) Figures are rounded.  - 12 - Schedule B Page 2 DISBURSEMENTS Amount Percentage of expenditure Category ($ million) to be financed Civil works Qinghai's Education 4.6 70 percent Program All Other Education 59.0 60 percent Programs Goods 21.0 100 percent of foreign expenditures; 100 percent of local expenditures (ex- factory) for locally manufactured items; 75 percent of local expenditures for other items procured locally Consultant services 2.3 100 percent Training 6.1 100 percent of foreign and local expenditures Unallocated 7.0 Total 100.0 ESTIMATED DISBURSEMENTS ($ million) Bank FY 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 Annual 12.0 25.0 30.0 30.0 3.0 Cumulative 12.0 37.0 67.0 97.0 100.0  -13 - Schedule C CHINA THIRD BASIC EDUCATION PROJECT TIMETABLE OF KEY PROJECT PROCESSING EVENTS (a) Time taken to prepare the project: 11 Months (b) Prepared by: Government of China with Association assistance, partially funded with a grant from Japan (c) First IDA mission: November 1994 (d) Appraisal mission departure: October 24, 1995 (e) Negotiations: January 1996 (f) Planned date of effectiveness: July 1996 (g) List of relevant ICRs: Credit/Loan No. Project Report Date Report No. Cr. 1908 China-Teacher Training 03/14/95 14071 ICR Ln 2057 Botswana-Third Education 12/22/89 8237 PAR Ln. 1867 Brazil-Northeast Basic Education 12/29/89 8266 PAR Cr. 1305 Haiti-Third Education 11/07/90 9103 PCR Ln. 2102 Indonesia-Second Textbook } 05/26/92 10678 PAR Cr. 0387 Indonesia-Third Education } Ln. 2030 Philippines-Sector Program for 12/29/93 12632 ICR Elementary Education This report is based on the findings of an appraisal mission to China in October/ November 1995. Mission members were Halsey L. Beemer, Jr. (General Educator, EA2RS, Task Manager), Hena Mukherjee (General Educator, EA2RS), Sandra F. Erb (Operations Analyst, EA2RS, Consultant); Mun Tsang (Human Resource Economist, Consultant) and Wingon Lee (Senior Educator, Consultant). Substantial contributions to project design and preparation were also made by Eid Dib (Architect, Consultant) and R.K. Ramachandran (Education Officer, UNICEF/Beijing). Peer reviewers were Lee Travers (Environmental Economist, EA2EM), Tom Eisemon (HDD), M.C. Chang (MN2HR) and J. Middleton (EDINP). The responsible Division Chief is Joseph Goldberg and the Department Director is Nicholas C. Hope.   Schedule 0 Page 1 of 3 STATUS OF BA