Strategies, choice, and control: Understanding parental decision-making with respect to children’s ECE participation

• In Event: Early childhood education in rural India: how do parents navigate an unregulated system, and what implications does this have for equity?

Proposal

In this paper we attempt to further unpack the diverse and complex empirical trends observed in the IECEI study by adding a qualitative lens to the examination and exploring factors influencing parental decision-making at the household level. More specifically, we try to understand why children’s ECE participation is so non-linear and out of sync with policy norms, and why more and less advantaged households differ so much from one another.

While investment in quality early childhood education is recognized in educational policy as a critical input for children’s holistic development, still little is known about how or why parents and families make decisions regarding children’s participation in the early years. The Young Lives study in the India is perhaps the only qualitative study that explores parental choice and perceptions in ECE (Vennam & Komanduri 2009; Streuli, Vennam & Woodhead 2011). However, a relatively small sample size and number of survey waves in early childhood, as well as the fact that the study is based in only one Indian state, limits the generalisation of its findings more widely.

This paper draws on data from personal interviews conducted with parents and caregivers of a sub-sample of 180 children across 12 purposively selected sampled villages. In each state, two villages were selected from each of the two sample districts, totalling to 4 villages per state. Within each district the selection of villages was undertaken purposively to provide maximum variation with respect to several factors. Sample villages were first grouped by children’s performance on the school readiness assessment (conducted in the first two years of the study), and villages where the average (village-level) student learning scores either remained in the bottom quartile or in the top quartile throughout these two learning tests were shortlisted. Other indicators – including the provision of pre-schools by management type, average parental education levels, and caste composition – were then reviewed in order to arrive at the final selection of villages.

In each shortlisted village, about 15 children were then purposively selected from the original sample on the basis of variations in their observed participation trends, household and parental characteristics. Parents of the 180 children selected through this process were interviewed in considerable detail about the decisions they had made, and continued to make, on behalf of their children. Because these interviews were conducted after the end of the quantitative field work, each interview could be rooted in the data collected on individual sample children across 11 waves of longitudinal field work (2011-2015), allowing for deeper and more specific inquiry into the factors that drove families’ decision making with respect to the education of these children.

We will present some of the broad conclusions emerging from this analysis and some preliminary analyses of the ways in which economic and/or social disadvantage appears to influence parental perceptions and choice with respect to young children.

References
Streuli, N.,Vennam, U., Woodhead, M. (2011). Increasing choice or inequality?Pathways through early education in Andhra Pradesh, India.Bernard van Leer Foundation.
Vennam, U., Komanduri, A., Cooper, E., Crivello, G., & Woodhead, M. (2009). Early Childhood Education Trajectories and Transitions: A study of the experiences and perspectives of parents and children in Andhra Pradesh, India. Young Lives Working Paper 52.

Authors

• Purnima Ramanujan, ASER Centre

• Suman Bhattacharjea, ASER Centre

• Manjistha Banerji, ASER Centre

• Mansi Nanda, ASER Centre

• Ben Alcott, University of Cambridge