Earlier Preschool Education for Better Development? Evidence from Vietnam

Nguyen, Thi Hoai An; Goutte, Stéphane

doi:10.2139/ssrn.4114185

Cited by 3 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 16 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Consequently, the current analyses cannot inform the debate about the optimal age for children to begin preschool education. Nguyen and Goutte (2022) analysis of the same dataset focused on this question. Third, despite the Vietnamese government’s attempts to standardize preschool education, it is likely that there was variability in its quality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, these may remove important nuances in the data without eliminating the unobserved group differences in child characteristics and parental motivations, values and behaviors that influence preschool attendance. A range of sophisticated statistical techniques and machine learning approaches have also attempted to overcome this challenge (Berlinski et al, 2008(Berlinski et al, , 2009Nguyen and Goutte, 2022). One strategy that preserves nuances in the data is to focus on children who attended preschool and to examine the relationship between the dose of preschool education they received and their outcomes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The second study focused on children who attended preschool. It entered 50 potential control variables into an analysis using a double machine learning approach ( Chernozhukov et al, 2018 ) to estimate the benefits of a one-year earlier preschool starting age on children’s outcomes at 8, 12, and 15 years of age ( Nguyen and Goutte, 2022 ). Although the study found statistically significant effects for language and mathematics skills at some ages, these accounted for less than 0.1 standard deviations in all cases.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

Persistence and fading of the cognitive and socio-emotional benefits of preschool education in a low-resource setting: Group differences and dose-dependent associations in longitudinal data from Vietnam

Dinh

Robinson²

2023

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

IntroductionFour analytic approaches examined the effectiveness of preschool education in Vietnam, which provides a context in which national curricula and teaching standards for preschools and schools, high levels of preschool attendance, and fee subsidies for disadvantaged children, limit the heterogeneity in children’s experiences that often obscure the outcomes associated with preschool attendance.MethodsThe Young Lives Study provided longitudinal data on children’s receptive vocabulary, mathematics, and life satisfaction at 5, 8, 12, and 15 years of age, and on their self-concept and relationships at 12 and 15 years.ResultsThe first analysis found that children who attended preschool (n = 1,562 at 5 years of age) had larger vocabularies at 5, 8, 12, and 15 years, greater mathematics knowledge at 5, 8, and 12 years, and higher life satisfaction at 5 and 12 years of age than the small number of children who did not attend preschool (n = 164 at 5 years of age). The second, found that the dose of preschool education (hours per week × 4 × months) received by children who attended preschool was positively associated with their receptive vocabulary and mathematics scores at 5, 8, 12, and 15 years of age, and with their life satisfaction at 5 and 15 years of age. Although the magnitude of the effect for vocabulary declined over time, it remained stable for mathematics. The third analysis found that a high dose of preschool education allowed disadvantaged rural children to achieve comparable or better scores than their urban peers for receptive vocabulary at 8, 12, and 15 years, mathematics at 12 years, and life satisfaction at all ages. The final analysis found that even a low dose of preschool education improved rural children’s receptive vocabulary at 5, 8, and 15 years, and their numeracy/mathematics scores at 5, 8, and 12 years.DiscussionTogether, the results suggest that preschool attendance had a small but meaningful positive association with Vietnamese children’s cognitive skills and life satisfaction that persisted for at least 10 years. These findings provide insights into the scale, scope, and longevity of effects that can be achieved from scaled-up preschool programs under resource-constrained conditions.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Persistence and fading of the cognitive and socio-emotional benefits of preschool education in a low-resource setting: Group differences and dose-dependent associations in longitudinal data from Vietnam

Dinh

Robinson²

2023

Front. Psychol.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To the best of our knowledge, there is less than a handful of studies on the effects of preprimary education in Vietnam. Nguyen and Goutte (2022) identified significant associations between younger preschool entry and enhanced cognitive development as well as body weight. However, the relationship between younger preschool entry and non-cognitive skills was less robust.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 92%

Financing Preprimary Education: How Vietnamese Provinces Allocate Scarce Resources

Nguyen-Hoang,

Ngoc Tran

2023

Public Finance and Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This study is the first to examine how provinces allocate resources for preprimary education in Vietnam. We find that despite reliance on the central government’s Decision 46, provinces in Vietnam show considerable autonomy and exhibit substantial variation in how they allocate education aid to preprimary education. The variation comes to light in how they allocate funds between salary and non-salary purposes and how they fiscally treat different types of students, namely socio-economically disadvantaged students, students with disabilities and in different grade levels. This study paves the way for exploration of a multitude of unanswered research inquiries in preprimary education in Vietnam.

show abstract

High doses of a national preschool program are associated with the long-term mitigation of adverse outcomes in cognitive development and life satisfaction among children who experience early stunting: a multi-site longitudinal study in Vietnam

Robinson,

Dinh

2023

Front. Public Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

BackgroundStunting (low height-for-age) is a marker of cumulative developmental disadvantage that can also contribute to impaired cognitive development and poor psychological wellbeing. Several interventions designed to preserve stunted children’s developmental potential through increasing their cognitive stimulation have proven to be effective. However, their resource-intensive nature limits their sustainability and scalability in the low-and middle-income countries in which 98% of stunted children live. The current study had three aims: to identify the domains of developmental disadvantage associated with stunting at 5 years of age in the Vietnamese context; to examine the relationship between Vietnamese children’s stunting status at 5 years of age, the dose of the national preschool program they received, and their cognitive skills and psychological well-being at 4 ages; and to determine whether some doses of the national preschool program were associated with the mitigation of adverse cognitive and wellbeing outcomes among stunted children.MethodThe Young Lives Study in Vietnam (n = 2,000; 31 sites) provided archival data that allowed calculation of the approximate dose (in hours) of the preschool program received by children, and longitudinal data on children’s growth (1, 5, 8, 12, and 15 years), receptive vocabulary (5, 8, 12 and 15 years), reading skills, mathematics skills and life satisfaction (each at 8, 12, and 15 years).ResultsStunting at 5 years of age was associated with diverse aspects of financial and social disadvantage, greater exposure to health risks, lower preventive health care, and constraints on maternal care. Scores for all cognitive variables at all ages were positively associated with preschool dose and negatively associated with stunted growth at 5 years of age. That is, effects associated with stunting and preschool dose at 5 years of age continued to be found during the subsequent 10 years. High doses of preschool education (3,000 h or more) were associated with the mitigation of adverse outcomes for most cognitive variables at most ages.ConclusionThe current findings raise the possibility that generic preschool programs delivered at high dose may provide a scalable and sustainable intervention to support the life opportunities of children who experience early stunting.

show abstract

Earlier Preschool Education for Better Development? Evidence from Vietnam

Cited by 3 publications

References 16 publications

Persistence and fading of the cognitive and socio-emotional benefits of preschool education in a low-resource setting: Group differences and dose-dependent associations in longitudinal data from Vietnam

Persistence and fading of the cognitive and socio-emotional benefits of preschool education in a low-resource setting: Group differences and dose-dependent associations in longitudinal data from Vietnam

Financing Preprimary Education: How Vietnamese Provinces Allocate Scarce Resources

High doses of a national preschool program are associated with the long-term mitigation of adverse outcomes in cognitive development and life satisfaction among children who experience early stunting: a multi-site longitudinal study in Vietnam

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About