Building Provincial-level Capacity on Monitoring the Quality of Compulsory Education 1. Objectives: The grant will assist China to strengthen M&E capacity in compulsory education at provincial level. 2. Background After significant efforts during the last two decades, China has provided free compulsory education (CE) for all children since 2006.   At this time quality of education improvements is the major concern. Therefore monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of the quality of education has become a priority in the government's agenda. The Ministry of Education (MOE) set up the National Center for Educational Quality Assessment in 2007, and more recently it has set up some provincial centers at selected provinces with the purpose of establishing a nationwide quality monitoring network. The National Center had kicked off its business through designing some assessment tools and doing piloted evaluation in selected areas. The major challenge faced so far is the weak capacity at the local levels. The proposed program will aim at building capacity at the provincial level, to support the work of the National Center to better monitor the CE quality nationally, but also to contribute directly to the establishment of CE quality monitoring network in the long run. 3. Components/activities The proposed components/activities are as the following: Component I: Diagnostic Study of  CE M&E Practice at Province Level A survey will be conducted to understand the current status of CE M&E at provincial level. The current administrative and managerial system, assessment and evaluation process and practice, utilization of the results and its impact, knowledge and skills of responsible staff will be the major areas of research. The methodology includes survey, interview, and desk review. The output of this component will be a status report. Component II: Design Training Program and Development Training Manual Based on Component I, an educational M&E training program for provincial level M&E institutions will be designed, and a set of training materials will be developed. An expert team will include experts in educational M&E, educational administration, educational technology, educational policy, and training. Training program and training manual will be produced as the outputs. Component III: Participatory Training Training programs will be implemented.  The targeted trainees include staff of provincial monitoring centers, officials from education departments and other stakeholders. The training programs will equip trainees with basic knowledge and skills in the area of educational M&E, and provide exposure to best practices from other countries. Trainees' capacity will be improved. Component IV: M&E Pilots in Two Selected Provinces Two provinces will be selected based on the current capacity to conduct quality monitoring under the guidance of the expert team. One province will be with strong capacity, the guidance from the nature will be technical advice. The other province will be weak and need more training and technical support from the center.  The outputs of this component will be two pilot reports. Component V: Consultation and dissemination of the case studies Workshops will be held to widely engage government officials, experts and practitioners in this area. The best practices on capacity building and implementation of educational M&E will be summarized and disseminated. The outputs of this component will be workshops held and a comprehensive report. 4. Expected Outcomes:    After the completion of the program, the following outcomes will be achieved: 1)  Provincial level M&E capacity will be improved 2)  National level M&E work has improved quality