An impact evaluation of Plan Indonesia’s early childhood program

Abstract

OBJECTIVES: High-quality preschools are known to prepare children for success in primary school. Over half of Indonesia's children now pass through preschools whose quality and effectiveness are unknown. Our goal was to evaluate two government preschool models, namely kindergarten (TK) and the less formal health-post (PAUD), with and without capacity-building efforts of a non-governmental organization (NGO-Plan), on children's language and math skills. METHODS:Thirteen TK and 17 PAUD Plan-supported and the same number of government-supported preschools were randomly selected from East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Five children from each (n = 292) and five who had graduated from each and were now in first grade (n = 241) were randomly selected and tested on language and math measures. The Plan-supported preschools were assessed for quality. Mothers reported on their family's socio-demographic situation and their child's preventive health practices, illnesses and diet over the previous two weeks.RESULTS: Analyses of covariance adjusting for clusters indicated that children attending Plan-supported preschools performed better overall, and especially those in TK preschools. Plan-supported TKs were observed to have higher quality than Plan-supported PAUDs. First graders who graduated from Plansupported preschools, both TK and PAUD, achieved higher scores on language and math tests than government-supported graduates. Preventive health practices were better in the Plan group, though diet and height-for-age were poor overall.CONCLUSIONS: Upgrades to the government preschool program are needed to raise its quality and effectiveness, specifically by introducing a mix of instructional and indoor free-choice play, resources and teacher training to support children's learning. KEY WORDS:Preschool; classroom quality; early childhood education; LMIC; capacity building; school readiness La traduction du résumé se trouve à la fin de l'article.

Measuring the implementation of early childhood development programs

“…The advantage of using a quantitative quality measure is that quality can be correlated with child learning and development outcomes. This has been done with preschool quality . One study spanning several years found that preschool quality was initially low and that children were not performing better than a control group .…”

“…This has been done with preschool quality. 16,[29][30][31] One study spanning several years found that preschool quality was initially low and that children were not performing better than a control group. 30 Only after several years of improving the play and teaching/learning activities did students perform better.…”

State of the science on implementation research in early child development and future directions

“…The case study of aeioTU in Colombia provided details on how teacher training made better use of interactions with children to enhance reasoning and language . Similarly, Bangladeshi and Indonesian preschool programs underwent improvements over several years based on findings that showed low quality of literacy and math teaching/learning . As quality improved, so did outcomes.…”

Does Long-Term Enrollment in Day-Care Maintain or Increase Early Developmental Gains—Findings from an Intervention Study in Rural Bangladesh

“…Despite this popularity, day-cares have low systematic coverage and face significant systematic barriers such as poorly maintained spaces as well as a lack of age-appropriate structured curriculum and trained caregivers. Hence, there is mixed evidence regarding the effectiveness of day-cares in stimulating the cognitive developments of children in LMICs [ 8 , 9 ].…”