Assessing a low-cost school readiness program in Mozambique

• In Event: Collaborative impact: experimental evidence from IDELA partnerships driving ECD effectiveness and innovation

Proposal

Despite a twofold increase in primary school enrolment in Mozambique over the past 15 years, educational outcomes remain largely disappointing. Primary completion rates have been stagnating at around 47% and only 6% of students achieved basic reading competency by the third grade. School readiness programmes have been proposed to address some of the causes related to high dropout rates and low academic achievement by increasing students’ emotional, social, and academic preparation to succeed in school. Children who enter primary school after a successful pre-primary education programme demonstrate higher test-score performance, class participation and effort, and high school completion rates.

This paper examines an accelerated pre-school program in the province of Zambezia, Mozambique. The programme aims to improve readiness in three spheres: children’s readiness for school, school’s readiness for children, and families’ readiness for school. To achieve this, the programme has the following three primary activities: (a). Providing a 120-hour summer school readiness programme for children aged 5 to 6; (b). Strengthening school councils and locally based education professionals to support school readiness opportunities; and (c). Providing 12 weeks of parent-to-parent education sessions to improve the skills of parents and caregivers to promote early success in school.

We used a mixed-methods cluster randomized controlled trial in 60 communities from 2 districts in Zambezia. In all 60 communities, we assessed children’s school readiness at baseline (November 2017) and again just prior to entering Grade 1 (March 2018). We implemented a family questionnaire, school record review, and the IDELA child-level assessment to measure school readiness. Qualitatively, we examined the reasons behind impacts and perceptions of the ASR programme through focus group discussions (FGDs) and in-depth interviews.

The midline results indicate that children attending the ASR summer school demonstrated new knowledge and skills. We found that the total IDELA score for children in treatment communities (i.e., Intention to Treat) by six points (0.36 SD). The results for those children who attended the programme (i.e., LATE) increased by 15 points (0.88 SD). These IDELA results are driven by impacts on emergent numeracy, emergent literacy, and motor skills. We also found that the programme had a 14 percentage-point (pp) increase on first grade enrolment for children in treatment communities and a 34pp increase for those who attended.
We also investigated the programme’s impact and perceived effects on caregivers’ attitudes, educational aspirations for their children, and parenting practices. Overall, our results suggest that the programme produced limited impacts on parental outcomes after 3 months. We did find positive, significant effects on caregivers’ educational aspirations for their children, as well as on a few of the parenting practices. These results presented are short-term impacts after only three months of programme implementation. Whether the positive programme impacts will be sustained over time is an empirical question that we will assess at the end by collection one final round of data in November 2018.

Authors

• Juan Bonilla, American Institutes for Research

• Kaitlin Carson, AIR

• Elizabeth Spier, American Institutes for Research