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

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

The International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) is an easy-to-use, rigorous global tool that measures children’s early learning and development from ages 3.5 – 6 years. IDELA was identified as a promising new tool in the early childhood development (ECD) field by the 2016 Lancet series on ECD, and is now used by over 50 organizations worldwide across 55 countries and 45 languages (Black et al., 2016). Data from IDELA studies has been used for a wide range of purposes, from small-scale program design and monitoring to generating evidence for national-scale policy decision making. However, recent analyses of tool use show that IDELA is most commonly used to generate evidence of program effectiveness with impact evaluations.

IDELA has been shown to effectively measure the impact of diverse types of ECD programming. This flexibility is critical in the current ECD landscape because there will not be a one-size-fits-all solution to expanding and improving early childhood education (ECE). Globally, coverage of ECE programs is hugely varied, as is the quality of the services children receive. Currently, the pre-primary education coverage rate in low- and middle-income countries is 45 percent, but coverage ranges from less than 1% in some nations to near universal coverage in others (UNESCO, 2015). In addition, substantial inequities exist within countries; children who do not have access to ECE services are more likely to be from poorer families, and those living in rural areas (World Bank, 2013). More governments are adopting policies to support ECE, but these changes will be slow and many countries lack the resources to make meaningful progress in this area. Therefore, partnerships between governments and other organizations, especially those designed to reach the most deprived, are critical for the future of field.

Rigorous research is need to understand whether new initiatives are impactful and whether existing programming can maintain quality in new or expanded contexts. This panel will focus on how different organizations have leveraged IDELA impact evaluation data to understand program effectiveness and further ECD advocacy efforts for diverse programs attempting to improve school readiness through different pathways. The American Institutes of Research (AIR) will present the results of a mixed-methods randomized controlled trial of a new school readiness initiative in Zambezia, Mozambique. Save the Children will present the results of a randomized control trial of an early childhood education quality improvement program in rural Bangalore, India. Finally, the Institute for Fiscal Studies will present the results of randomized control trials of two different innovative initiatives to improve children’s school readiness in Ghana and Pakistan.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Early Childhood Development

Chair

• Lauren Pisani, Save the Children

Individual Presentations

• Assessing a low-cost school readiness program in Mozambique - Juan Bonilla, American Institutes for Research; Kaitlin Carson, AIR; Elizabeth Spier, American Institutes for Research

• Effects of a center, teacher, and community focused intervention in rural Bangalore preschools - Jonathan Seiden, Save the Children; Romilla Karnati, Save the Children

• The measurement of child development in the field and its use for policy evaluation - Pamela Jervis, Institute for Fiscal Studies; Sonya Krutikova, Institute for Fiscal Studies; Peter Leighton, Institute for Fiscal Studies; Bet Caeyers, Institute for Fiscal Studies; Orazio Attanasio, University College London and Institute for Fiscal Studies; Sarah Cattan, Institute for Fiscal Studies; Lina Cardona Sosa, Central Bank of Colombia; Marc H Bornstein, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; Alison Andrew, Institute for Fiscal Studies; Imran Rasul, University College London and Institute for Fiscal Studies

Discussant

• Amy Jo Dowd, Save the Children