The Effects of a Play-Based Preschool Learning Program in Rural Ghana

• In Event: Evidence to policy in education: leveraging rigorous research for improved education quality

Proposal

As in many other developing countries, children under the age of five in rural Ghana often fail to reach their development potential. As demonstrated in the previous presentation, there are many randomized evaluations of various programs working to improve the quality of education in the developing world. However, there is little evidence in the literature on the efficacy of interventions that target improvements in both parental practice and quality of pre-schools through scalable implementation models. Researchers are evaluating the impact of a play-based learning program in rural Ghana that engages both teachers and parents on early childhood cognitive development.

A key feature of the program is its scalability; it is low cost and requires only locally available resources and infrastructure for implementation. This program is thus a promising approach to tackling early childhood education quality challenges in underserved rural communities in Ghana. Through this program, researchers aim to generate evidence which contributes more broadly to the state of knowledge on the development and scaling of early childhood education interventions in low-income rural contexts.

Having developed, tested, and refined the program content and training materials, an NGO is focusing on adapting implementation to a model in which the Ghana Education Service (GES) and teachers take key roles in ensuring the success of the program. GES officials and NGO staff have monthly meetings to track the progress of the play schemes and to ensure implementation quality. The evidence provided by this evaluation will be crucial for determining whether there is value in mainstreaming the program across Ghana and replicating it in other countries. This project demonstrates how researchers can collaborate with the government and other partners to generate evidence and influence policy and programmatic changes.

During this presentation, academic researchers will discuss how this project 1) answers important theoretical and practical questions about quality of education; and 2) exemplifies the kind of collaboration between researchers and educators that can fruitfully change education practice.

Authors

• Bet Caeyers, Institute for Fiscal Studies

• Sonya Krutikova, Institute for Fiscal Studies

• Pamela Jervis, Institute for Fiscal Studies