This year, we have:
• Distributed 400,000 vitamin packets to families with babies at risk for nutritional deficiencies.
• Screened 30,000 children for vision problems and passed out 8,000 pairs of glasses to nearsighted students.
• Provided counseling programs to more than 4,500 students in rural China.
• Deployed a team of undercover "patients" to visit 48 rural clinicians and measure the quality of health care that they received.
• Created the first-ever standardized evaluation tools for 180 vocational school programs.
• Handed out $53,000 in financial aid to the poorest rural students in China to attend high school.
• Tracked down 2,000 rural babies and tested their physical and cognitive development.
• Treated 2,000 children for intestinal worms.
• Initiated teacher performance pay programs for teachers of 5,000 students in rural China.
• Launched a prefecture-wide pilot for computer assisted learning in Qinghai Province.
REAP director Scott Rozelle is writing a monthly series for Caixin Magazine titled, "Inequality 2030: Glimmering Hope in China in a Future Facing Extreme Despair." Three columns are already out!
Column 1: Why we need to worry about inequality
Column 2: China's inequality starts during the first 1,000 days
Column 3: Behind before they start - The preschool years
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Most importantly, we've continued to communicate our findings to national leaders and advance change on critical fronts. In 2013 China's State Council signed and approved five more of REAP's policy briefs, bringing our total to 19!
Some of our most compelling findings this year include:
• Rural students are up to 20 times less likely than their urban counterparts to attend elite colleges.
• China's first ever life counseling curriculum for rural schools, developed by REAP, reduces the middle school drop out rate by 25%.
• 55% of rural babies are anemic, and 85% are suffering from cognitive or motor delays.
• 40% of rural primary school children are infected with intestinal worms, and this infection is associated with worse performance on cognitive tests.
• Having anemic students in class leads to worse academic performance even among the non-anemic students in the same class.
• Only 1 in 6 rural/migrant children with correctible vision problems in China has glasses.
• Over an academic year, a nearsighted child that wears glasses learns roughly double what they would without glasses.
• Vocational schools fail to teach students any practical skills and even make them forget basic math skills they originally had.
Do you want to learn more? For a full list of our policy briefs, published papers and working papers from 2013, please click here.
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