The World Bank Renovation of General Education Project (P150058) REPORT NO.: RES41728 RESTRUCTURING PAPER ON A PROPOSED PROJECT RESTRUCTURING OF RENOVATION OF GENERAL EDUCATION PROJECT APPROVED ON JUNE 30, 2015 TO SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM EDUCATION EAST ASIA AND PACIFIC Regional Vice President: Victoria Kwakwa Country Director: Carolyn Turk Regional Director: Daniel Dulitzky Practice Manager/Manager: Tobias Linden Task Team Leader(s): An Thi My Tran The World Bank Renovation of General Education Project (P150058) ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS DO Development Objective GoV Government of Vietnam IDA International Development Association IP Implementation Progress MOET Ministry of Education and Training MU Moderately Unsatisfactory NCFLT National Center for Foreign Language Testing NCSDGEQ National Centre for Sustainable Development of General Education NLSAS National Large-Scale Assessment System RGEP Renovation of General Education Project PDO Project Development Objective PMU Project Management Unit The World Bank Renovation of General Education Project (P150058) Note to Task Teams: The following sections are system generated and can only be edited online in the Portal. BASIC DATA Product Information Project ID Financing Instrument P150058 Investment Project Financing Original EA Category Current EA Category Partial Assessment (B) Partial Assessment (B) Approval Date Current Closing Date 30-Jun-2015 31-Dec-2020 Organizations Borrower Responsible Agency SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM Ministry of Education and Training Project Development Objective (PDO) Original PDO The Project Development Objective is to raise student learning outcomes by: (i) revising and implementing the curriculum following a competency-based approach; and (ii) improving the effectiveness of instruction by creating and disseminating textbooks aligned with the revised curriculum. OPS_TABLE_PDO_CURRENTPDO Summary Status of Financing (US$, Millions) Net Ln/Cr/Tf Approval Signing Effectiveness Closing Commitment Disbursed Undisbursed IDA-56910 30-Jun-2015 08-Apr-2016 08-Aug-2016 31-Dec-2020 77.00 15.73 63.72 The World Bank Renovation of General Education Project (P150058) Policy Waiver(s) Does this restructuring trigger the need for any policy waiver(s)? No Note to Task Teams: End of system generated content, document is editable from here. I. PROJECT STATUS AND RATIONALE FOR RESTRUCTURING SUMMARY OF PROJECT STATUS AND PROPOSED CHANGE 1. A credit in the amount of SDR 55.4 million (US$77 million equivalent) was approved by the Board of Executive Directors of the International Development Association (IDA) on June 30, 2015 to finance the Renovation of General Education Project (RGEP). The Financing Agreement for the RGEP became effective on August 8, 2016. The RGEP supports the efforts of the Government of Vietnam (GoV) in raising student learning outcomes by: (i) revising and implementing the curriculum following a competency-based approach; and (ii) improving the effectiveness of instruction by creating and disseminating textbooks aligned with the revised curriculum. Specifically, REGEP key interventions include: (a) Curriculum development to support the development and implementation of a revised curriculum that is competency- based for all school subjects from grades 1-12 through: (i) developing and piloting a revised curriculum that aims to promote students’ acquisition of both competencies and content knowledge; (ii) delivering online and face-to-face training to educators and administrators on implementing the new curriculum; and (iii) drafting materials to guide publishers on developing appropriately aligned textbooks and other pedagogical materials. (b) Development and dissemination of aligned textbooks to support the development of a set of textbooks to align with the new curriculum and the provision of aligned textbooks to schools with high numbers of economically disadvantaged students. (c) Learning assessment and analysis for continuous improvement of curriculum and policy to ensure that learning outcomes are measured and analyzed for continuous improvement of curriculum and policy through supporting: (i) the establishment of the National Centre for Sustainable Development of General Education (NCSDGEQ) and the National Center for Foreign Language Testing (NCFLT); (ii) research and capacity-building in curriculum development and assessment for the Centers’ staff and relevant officials; (iii) expansion of the National Large-Scale Assessment system (NLSAS); and (iv) consultations/outreach campaign. (d) Project management and M&E to ensure effective project implementation, monitoring and evaluation. 2. RGEP encountered significant start-up delays during the first two years, largely due to external factors beyond the control of the implementing agency, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), including delayed effectiveness of nearly one year and a decision by the National Assembly to postpone the roll-out of the new curriculum for one year. A credit amount of US$14.03 million has been disbursed to date, with an estimated US$5.27 million is expected to be disbursed by December 31, 2020, raising the disbursement rate to about 25.06 percent ($19.3 million). The project has The World Bank Renovation of General Education Project (P150058) been rated Moderately Unsatisfactory for either development objective (DO) or implementation progress (IP), or both, since February 2018. 3. During the last twelve months, the MOET established the required conditions for the new curriculum to be rolled- out in September 2020. Specifically: i) endorsement and release of the 29 new school curricula; completion of teacher training for 18,408 core teachers and 11,200 primary education curriculum champions on the new curriculum using both face to face and online modality (amidst COVID-19 disruption); ii) development and appraisal five sets of new Grade 1 textbooks; iii) development of textbooks for Grades 2 and 6 is underway and expected to be adopted by the end of 2020; iv) development of the three new sets of teacher professional development modules on competency-based teaching and assessment practices aligned with the new curriculum to prepare teachers for implementing the new curriculum; and, v) completion of the national pilot and first official large-scale assessment (NLSA) for 14 subject exams in Grades 5, 9 and 12 in June-July 2020. 4. However, on other aspects of the project there has been little implementation progress. In particular, the textbook Component 2 on Textbook development could not be implemented as the National Assembly issued a resolution number 122/2020/QH14 dated 19/6/2020 requesting not to use public fund to finance textbook development, therefore the MOET had to cancel all procurement activities in this component. In addition, the two new National Assessment and Curriculum Development Centers, which constitute the majority of project financing, have not advanced beyond the initial planning and design stages. There have also been significant weaknesses in the capacity of the Project Management Unit which have not been resolved in time, with the result that agreed actions are frequently not completed on time. 5. Although enabling conditions for the PDO have been established, the PDO cannot be achieved and measured before the Closing Date as two out of three PDO indicators could not be achieved and measured. The PDO indicator 1 on student learning gains is not measurable since the new General Education Curriculum (GEC) 2018 comes into effect to Grade 1 in school year 2020-2021 while the first cohort of Grade 3, which is planned to be used for learning gains measurement, will be in 2022-2023. The PDO Indicator 3 on equitable access to learning materials is also not measurable as there have been no official surveys of textbook access although there have been in place various policies at national, provincial and school levels stipulating the provision of textbooks for disadvantaged and poor students to assure access to textbooks to all students, and the project did not provide textbooks to disadvantaged schools as the component 2 on textbooks was cancelled. 6. The GoV and the Bank could not agree on a revised implementation plan which would ensure the remaining activities are completed in a reasonable time period and, therefore, decided to cancel the remaining project fund prior to project closing to ensure that the cancelled amount can be recommitted to Vietnam Country Program. 7. There are no outstanding fiduciary, social or environmental issues, and no overdue audits. II. DESCRIPTION OF PROPOSED CHANGES 8. On December 23, 2020, the Association received a request from the Ministry of Finance to cancel US$ 57,704,392 (SDR 40,016,637 equivalent) from the original committed credit amount, as the funds will not be used prior to the closing date. The World Bank Renovation of General Education Project (P150058) 9. The amount proposed for cancellation comes from two main sources: (a) savings from unused funds from the component 2 of textbook development of almost US$24 million with the government’s decision not to use IDA for both textbook development and the online learning management system (LMS) platform development. Other unused funds arise from savings of $35 million from component 3 of learning assessment and analysis for continuous improvement of curriculum and policy to support the construction of two centers for assessment and for curriculum development and associated research and capacity building activities. Note to Task Teams: The following sections are system generated and can only be edited online in the Portal. III. SUMMARY OF CHANGES Changed Not Changed Cancellations Proposed ✔ Reallocation between Disbursement Categories ✔ Implementing Agency ✔ DDO Status ✔ Project's Development Objectives ✔ Results Framework ✔ Components and Cost ✔ Loan Closing Date(s) ✔ Disbursements Arrangements ✔ Disbursement Estimates ✔ Overall Risk Rating ✔ Safeguard Policies Triggered ✔ EA category ✔ Legal Covenants ✔ Institutional Arrangements ✔ Financial Management ✔ Procurement ✔ Implementation Schedule ✔ Other Change(s) ✔ The World Bank Renovation of General Education Project (P150058) Economic and Financial Analysis ✔ Technical Analysis ✔ Social Analysis ✔ Environmental Analysis ✔ IV. DETAILED CHANGE(S) OPS_DETAILEDCHANGES_CANCELLATIONS_TABLE CANCELLATIONS Value Reason Current Cancellation New Ln/Cr/Tf Status Currency Date of for Amount Amount Amount Cancellation Cancellation Disburs UNDISBURSE IDA-56910- ing&Re XDR 55,400,000.00 40,016,637.00 23-Dec-2020 15,383,363.00 D BALANCE 001 paying AT CLOSING OPS_DETAILEDCHANGES_REALLOCATION _TABLE REALLOCATION BETWEEN DISBURSEMENT CATEGORIES Financing % Current Allocation Actuals + Committed Proposed Allocation (Type Total) Current Proposed IDA-56910-001 | Currency: XDR iLap Category Sequence No: 1 Current Expenditure Category: GD,WK,NonCS,CS,TrngWS,IOC 55,400,000.00 8,789,857.04 15,383,363.00 100.00 100.00 Total 55,400,000.00 8,789,857.04 15,383,363.00 . Note to Task Teams: End of system generated content, document is editable from here. Please delete this note when finalizing the document