The World Bank Improving Preschool Education in Georgia through Social Accountability Processes (P161435) REPORT NO.: RES37781 RESTRUCTURING PAPER ON A PROPOSED PROJECT RESTRUCTURING OF IMPROVING PRESCHOOL EDUCATION IN GEORGIA THROUGH SOCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY PROCESSES APPROVED ON MARCH 24, 2017 TO SAVE THE CHILDREN – GEORGIA OFFICE GOVERNANCE EUROPE AND CENTRAL ASIA Regional Vice President: Cyril E Muller Country Director: Sebastian-A Molineus Global Director: Edward Olowo-Okere Practice Manager/Manager: Daniel J. Boyce Task Team Leader: Nino Kutateladze, Josef S. Trommer The World Bank Improving Preschool Education in Georgia through Social Accountability Processes (P161435) ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS CCY Coalition of Children and Youth CIVITAS International Association Civitas Georgica ECE Early Childhood Education HEART Healing and Education through Art IDELA International Development and Learning Assessment MESCS Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports NPA National Preschool Association SCG Save the Children International Branch of Georgia SC Steering Committee The World Bank Improving Preschool Education in Georgia through Social Accountability Processes (P161435) BASIC DATA Product Information Project ID Financing Instrument P161435 Investment Project Financing Original EA Category Current EA Category Not Required (C) Not Required (C) Approval Date Current Closing Date 24-Mar-2017 16-Jan-2020 Organizations Borrower Responsible Agency Save the Children – Georgia Office Save the Children – Georgia Office Financing (in USD Million) FIN_SUMM_PUB_TBL SUMMARY Total Project Cost .68 Total Financing .68 Financing Gap 0 DETAILS -NewFin3 Project Development Objective (PDO) Original PDO The objective of the Project is to empower citizens through social accountability interventions, to improve the delivery of and resource allocation of pre-school education services in targeted municipalities of the Member Country. OPS_TABLE_PDO_CURRENTPDO The World Bank Improving Preschool Education in Georgia through Social Accountability Processes (P161435) Summary Status of Financing Net TF Approval Signing Effectiveness Closing Commitment Disbursed Undisbursed TF-A4473 24-Mar-2017 10-Apr-2017 10-Apr-2017 16-Jan-2020 .68 .67 .01 Policy Waiver(s) Does this restructuring trigger the need for any policy waiver(s)? No I. PROJECT STATUS AND RATIONALE FOR RESTRUCTURING A. Project Status The overall implementation progress has been rated as Satisfactory in the ISR dated June 13, 2019 as bulk of the project’s intermediate outcome indicators are well on track. The project is implemented by Save the Children International Branch of Georgia (SCG) in close partnership with non-governmental organization International Association Civitas Georgica (“Civitas). Despite initial implementation delays at the launch of the project, all key envisaged activities are well advanced, and the project is producing good results on the ground. As of July 19, 2019, the grant has disbursed 69 percent of the proceeds, about 470,000 USD from the total grant amount of 680,000 USD. There are no outstanding project audits. The National Preschool Association (NPA) uniting municipal kindergarten management units was established under the grant in October 2018 to advocate changes in Early Childhood Education (ECE) and to support kindergartens. NPA currently enrolls 42 municipalities instead of originally planned 27 municipalities given the strong traction and interest at the local level. NPA board members from 27 municipalities have received targeted trainings to improve capacity in public speaking, monitoring and social accountability; moreover, the trainings supported professional development of 16 teachers from Rustavi to attend 6-day Healing and Education through Art (HEART) program that is art-based approach to support children’s emotional well-being and development. Given the expansion of NPA membership, additional time will be needed to support capacity building of new member municipalities. One of the key objectives of the project was to develop the monitoring and feedback mechanism to strengthen social accountability processes at the local, municipality level. The preschool benchmarking methodology has been developed and new tool collects data from 3 different sources to monitor kindergarten performance and collect feedback from service recipients. The benchmarking system consists of 4 main areas: (i) management of kindergartens; (ii) cooperation with parents and local community; (iii) educational and developmental processes; and (iv) infrastructure and environment. The data is collected through financial questionnaire for reporting on kindergarten spending by different categories, kindergarten self-assessment questionnaire that collects information on how the kindergartens are managed and collaborates with communities, educational processes and infrastructure environment, and parent surveys. The latter is the main tool to support the social accountability approach and reflect service receivers voice is heard by the decision makers. The data allows managers to understand where the kindergarten stands vis-à-vis pre-defined quality The World Bank Improving Preschool Education in Georgia through Social Accountability Processes (P161435) criteria and what is needed to further develop and get to the advance level. The project covers municipalities with ethnic minorities, particularly Marneuli municipality having one of the largest ethnic minority-Azeri population in Georgia. As field visits showed, majority of kindergarten staff had difficulty understanding Georgian language, therefore the project supported translation of benchmarking tools into Azeri language. As of now, benchmarking was implemented in 7 pilot municipalities under the project to assess performance of selected 13 kindergartens. The benchmarking tools were fine-tuned following the pilot and finalized for application in all kindergartens of 42 municipalities. The data generated has been entered in the specially designed software. The data produced through benchmarking is already applied by NPA members to advocate the most burning issues revealed during the exercise. The benchmarking data will shortly become publicly available. The project is supporting the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports (MESCS) in planning and decision making through data and evidence generated from the benchmarking exercise. The project is governed by a Steering Committee (SC) composed of all relevant governmental agencies responsible for Early Childhood Education. The progress towards achievement of Project Development Objective (PDO) is assessed as Satisfactory given that one of the three PDO level indicators related to the Benchmarking Assessment of 27 municipalities is well on track with 42 municipalities already benchmarked far exceeding the original number of target municipalities. Full set of data is not yet available to evaluate the remainder two indicators (Percentage of surveyed respondents in the target communities who confirm positive changes due to newly established benchmarking system; percentage of identified issues addressed in annual municipal programs and financial plans as a result of benchmarking) given the initial, six-month implementation delays. Given this delay, implementation of the respective baseline and follow on surveys have been postponed. Nonetheless, based on the project monitoring, progress reports and field visits, target beneficiaries deem new monitoring tools developed under the grant as valuable and there are some initial cases of incorporating benchmarking results in the municipal program and financial planning. By the end of the 2nd year, the grant will generate benchmarking results from all 42 municipalities and it will be possible to calculate what challenges have been revealed and what percentage of them have been addressed. B. Rationale for Restructuring The project is closely aligned with Georgia’s Country Partnership Framework (CPF) for 2019 – 2022 and supports focus area 2 – Investing in Human Capital. The project contributes to objective 2.1 of the CPF aimed at improved quality and relevance of education system, which has emphasized promoting early childhood development, particularly in lagging regions and among those in disadvantaged ethic groups and with lower socioeconomic status, as one of the key priorities for the future of work. The regional focus of this project is well tailored to the identified challenges in the CPF. The rationale for the proposed change, six-month extension of the closing date, is to allow sufficient time to finalize and scale up grant activities, advocate changes at the national level through NPA and support the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports to institutionalize and expand social accountability practices introduced by the project. The launch of project implementation was delayed by six months partly due to (i) lengthy Bank procedures to set contractual arrangements between the recipient and the third party and (ii) political developments in the country, such as 2019 Presidential elections, local municipality elections and delays in the implementation of the provisions set in the Law on Early and Preschool Education by the central government. Given strong implementation progress, the proposed extension will enable to maximize project impact at the national level. The World Bank Improving Preschool Education in Georgia through Social Accountability Processes (P161435) This restructuring paper is in response to a request from the Director of Save the Children dated June 5, 2019, which proposes no-cost extension of the grant by six months. The request is accompanied by a detailed action plan for the extension period, communicated and agreed with the Bank team. II. DESCRIPTION OF PROPOSED CHANGES The implementing agency has requested a six-month extension of the grant to scale up project activities in additional municipalities and allow sufficient time to maximize grant impact at the national level. Namely, the following activities are proposed during the restructuring period: (i) expand the activities and advocacy efforts in additional 15 municipalities; (ii) support the NPA in advocating for changes on national level based on the benchmarking results reflecting parents’ priorities. For this purpose, the implementing agency will ensure that NPA is part of different decision-making units such as state committees, working groups and consultancy boards; (iii) identify potential funding opportunities for the NPA to expand its operations beyond the project; (iv) finalize piloting of the Save the Children International Development and Learning Assessment (IDELA) tools. As benchmarking methodology does not include tools to collect data directly from children, the piloting of IDELA will enable to strengthen project efforts to understand how kindergartens perform in this dimension and will allow holistic approach to assess and plan efforts for improvement; (v) build strong relationship with Coalition of Children and Youth (CCY) and ensure that NPA is full member of the coalition. III. SUMMARY OF CHANGES Changed Not Changed Project's Development Objectives ✔ Loan Closing Date(s) ✔ Implementation Schedule ✔ Implementing Agency ✔ Results Framework ✔ Components and Cost ✔ Cancellations Proposed ✔ Additional Financing Proposed ✔ Reallocation between Disbursement Categories ✔ Disbursements Arrangements ✔ Disbursement Estimates ✔ Change in Overall Risk Rating ✔ Safeguard Policies Triggered ✔ The World Bank Improving Preschool Education in Georgia through Social Accountability Processes (P161435) EA category ✔ Legal Covenants ✔ Institutional Arrangements ✔ Financial Management ✔ Procurement ✔ Other Change(s) ✔ IV. DETAILED CHANGE(S) OPS_DETAILEDCHANGES_PDO_TABLE PROJECT DEVELOPMENT OBJECTIVE Current PDO The objective of the Project is to empower citizens through social accountability interventions, to improve the delivery of and resource allocation of pre-school education services in targeted municipalities of the Member Country. Proposed New PDO The objective of the Project is to empower citizens through social accountability interventions, to improve the delivery of and resource allocation of pre-school education services in targeted municipalities of Georgia. OPS_DETAILEDCHANGES_LOANCLOSING_TABLE LOAN CLOSING DATE(S) Original Revised Proposed Proposed Deadline TF Status Closing Closing(s) Closing for Withdrawal Applications TF-A4473 Effective 16-Jan-2020 16-Jul-2020 16-Nov-2020