The remark was made by the World Bank inspection team at a conference to sum-up the PEDC in the 2003-2010 period, held by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training (MoET) in Hanoi on Dec. 8.
The World Bank supervision team visited PEDC beneficiary localities from Nov. 24 to Dec. 8 to assess the completion rates of the project’s initially-set targets and its effects on Vietnam’s implementation of educational targets as well as its sustainable benefits to the country.
At the conference, the WB team’s head, Maris O’Rouke, reported that the local authorities, teachers and parents of students showed improved awareness of their role and responsibility in reducing the proportion of children leaving school and in encouraging children to continue their education.
The project helped many schools obtain the minimum standard quality for their educational services. More than 300,000 teachers and managing officials in the projected localities were provided with training in 14 different programmes.
The PEDC also coordinated well a government-sponsored programme to upgrade schools to surpass the mid-term target in the number of schools upgraded and rebuilt.
Regarding financial management, the WB team praised the PEDC for a high rate of capital disbursement at over 99 percent.
The PEDC’s Director Dang Tu An said the project after seven years helped improve infrastructure for primary schools in the targeted districts. It built and upgraded more than 19,860 classrooms in 6,720 schools, 5,100 teacher’s rooms, and 10,640 toilets. It equipped the schools with 72,000 school desks, 3,400 tables for teachers, and thousands of blackboards.
It also helped improve the quality of primary education services through training teachers as well as assistants to help teachers and students of ethnic minority groups to better understand each other and grasp the curricula.
Thanks to the project, the number of registered students in 2010 was 98.7 percent compared to the target of 96 percent and the rate of children completing primary education in 2010 was 97.1 percent, exceeding the target by 10 percent.
The PEDC is a cooperation project of the Vietnamese Government, the World Bank, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), and the Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID)./.
