The Gansu Basic Education Project (GBEP) was designed to help the Chinese government to achieve Universal Primary Education by 2005 and Universal Basic Education by 2010 in Gansu Province.
The purpose of the project was to have more boys and girls entering and completing the primary and junior middle school cycles in Gansu, especially in the four target counties, and to reduce inequalities within the educational system . After six years of implementation, the project attracted considerable interest especially within the education development community both at national and international level.
Although there are plenty of success stories in the project, it is also relevant to ask - are there also lessons from its failures, or aspects that did not work well? What would the managers of the project do differently now if they had the chance to implement the project again?