Impact of quality and pre-primary education on school readiness and numeracy in Lao People’s Democratic Republic

Abstract

The article examined the impact of pre-primary education in Lao PDR on children’s school readiness and numeracy. Using a quasi-experimental research design, we compared children (ages 4 and 5, N = 445) in five districts across three groups: (1) attending a school with an NGO-government collaboration, (2) attending a school without an NGO-collaboration, and (3) not attending school. Quality was assessed using the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale. Results show that pre-primary schools with an NGO-collaboration were higher in quality than other schools. Children in a school with an NGO-collaboration scored higher on school readiness than both other groups of children; the impact on numeracy differs by age. Five lessons learned are discussed.

The Adaptation of Early Childhood Care and Education to Cultural and Local Characteristics in West Africa: Challenges for Educational Psychology Research

“…Despite efforts to adapt imported standardised tools, they remain inadequately adapted to contemporary African contexts (Serpell & Haynes, 2004) and show limited ability to evaluate community-based and religious ECCE quality and outcomes. Moreover, tools such as The Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised (ECERS-R), are "increasingly used as a global standard of quality" (Pérez & Saavendra, 2017, p. 8), unattainable for most majority world countries (Loomis et al, 2018). Hence there is an urgent need to design and adapt methods and indicators that reflect both local conceptions and locally relevant determinants of early childhood educational quality.…”

“…more likely to provide contextually relevant educational experience(Fuentes, 2021;Loomis et al, 2018). We can for example easily recognise that community-based and Koranic 'Daaras' or 'Madrasa' programmes take a culturally relevant curricula approach (1) using a familiar language (indigenous languages or liturgical languages); (2) in conformity with prevailing parental ethnotheories and (3) creating a fluid transition between formal and informal education.…”