Scalability and Sustainability of Early Childhood Education (ECE): Evidence from National Reform of Pre-Primary education in Ethiopia

• In Event: Governance, systems and policy for ECE programming

Proposal

Effective policies to expand equitable and quality early learning experience are critical if universal pre-primary education under the national and international agenda is to be achieved. Bolstered by a globally growing evidence on the value of investing in early childhood development (Black et al., 2017; Heckman & Cunha, 2007; Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000), the Government of Ethiopia introduced O-Class (zero-class) in 2011, a one-year fee-free reception class for 6-year-olds attached to the public primary school. With an unprecedented expansion of O-Class nationwide that reaching 85 percent of primary school, over the six-year period from 2010 to 2016, the gross enrollment rate in pre-primary soared from 5.2 percent to 46 percent, according to the annual education statistics in Ethiopia (EMIS, 2017).

Since its initiation in 2011, O-Class is currently serving more than 2.6 million children in Ethiopia. Due to a scarcity of rigorous empirical evidence, nevertheless, it is not clear whether preschool attendance actually contributes to boosting student’s learning outcomes. Moreover, a limitation of the ECE evidence base is the lack of research on scale with the latest, nationally or regionally representative data. Empirical research in ECE focuses heavily on the experimental study among the targeted group; thus, substantial gaps remain in our understanding of the conditions that support the ECE program to scale-up.

This study aims to fill this gap. Given that the Government has embarked upon a massive expansion of O-Class since 2011, I leverage two regionally/linguistically representative data of the Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) administered in 2010 (pre-reform) and 2016 (post-reform) in order to assess whether relationships between preschool attendance and learning outcomes have changed over time. In particular, this corresponds to the period of six years spanning the reform when the gross enrolment rate of pre-primary surged nearly ten times. Two large, cross-sectional EGRA datasets used in this study have early grade reading performance before and after the reform, as well as comparable information on retrospective response to preschool attendance and characteristics of students and families. This aspect offers a unique opportunity to test to the extent that the initial role of preschool in predicting students’ academic achievement has grown or diminished between 2010 and 2016, especially on basic literacy for children in Ethiopia.

Using a quantitative approach, two analytical dimensions are explored. First, this paper investigates whether preschool makes any positive contribution to early grade reading performance and, if it exists, how this contribution has evolved between 2010 and 2016 throughout the reform. In the second analytical dimension, I assume the role of preschool will be varied by different groups or different structural factors that could explain children’s academic performance in pre- and post-reform. In particular, this aims to elucidate whether preschool attendance reinforces or reduces the achievement gap across different groups using various definitions of socio-demographic advantage, such as gender, rural and urban residency, parental literacy, and home learning resources. To mitigate the threat of selection bias (endogeneity) of preschool attendance, the estimates using ordinary least squares, propensity score matching, and school fixed-effects will be presented and compared in the presentation.

1) Does the reform in pre-primary education strengthen or weaken the role of preschool in predicting students’ early grade reading performance?
The results show that, during the pre-reform period in 2010, there is no significant relationship between preschool attendance and early grade reading at Grade 2 and 3. Conversely, after the massive expansion of O-Class, there are positive effects of preschool attendance in 2016: effect size varies by tasks from 0.1 SD in listening comprehension to 0.23 SD in oral reading fluency. When exploring this relationship by regions, the preschool advantage is the largest in the historically disadvantaged region in Ethiopia (Somali), which turns out to be equivalent to one year of schooling. In addition, regarding the probability of being non-reader and proficient reader, having attended preschool decreases a child’s probability of being non-reader at 11 percentage points and increases the probability of being proficient reader at 8 percentage points in 2016 (post-reform), whereas there is no significant effect in 2010 (pre-reform).

2) Does preschool attendance reinforce or reduce learning gaps between boys versus girls and the advantaged versus the disadvantaged?
Before the expansion of preschool in 2010, the marginal effects of preschools are insignificant regardless of gender. On the contrary, the gain from preschool attendance is more significant for girls than boys in 2016 after wider access to preschool is implemented. The results of this study also show that the expansion of preschool access can reinforce learning gaps between the advantaged and the disadvantaged. Differential effects of preschool by sub-groups, which favored the advantaged, are particularly pronounced in the probabilities of being proficient reader. 2010 cohort shows no differential gains by preschool attendance depending on urban-rural residency, whereas greater benefits from preschool are observed in 2016 cohort for children living in urban than those who in rural areas. Similarly, the gains from preschool are more significant for the advantaged among children with literate fathers. In particular, this pattern appears consistently across two cohorts in 2010 and 2016. These findings provide suggestive evidence that, although the reform in pre-primary education strengthens the role of preschool in predicting student’s early grade reading performance, preschool attendance can rather exacerbate learning inequality between advantaged and disadvantaged children.

An explicit statement of quality early childhood development for ‘all’ girls and boys in SDG target 4.2.2 is momentous in the history of global policy development (Woodhead, 2017). By tracing the reform process and trends in student’s learning in a country where experiencing the most rapid and massive expansion of pre-primary in Sub-Saharan Africa, this paper aims to facilitate policy discourse on scalability and sustainability of ECE in the LMIC context. Next steps for national policy in ECE and pragmatic implementation strategies, as well as the role of research in these next steps, will be discussed. Quality ECE is fundamental to achieving the SDGs related to poverty and inequality, gender and social inclusion, and the promotion of sustainable futures for all.

Author

• Janice Heejin Kim, University of Cambridge