Children’s Learning and Development in the Time of COVID-19 in Ghana: The Protective Role of Quality Early Childhood Education

• In Event: Early Childhood Education in Developing Countries During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Estimates of Risk and Protection

Abstract

The past decade has seen a rise in research on the effects of mass trauma experiences on children and youth, focusing on natural disasters, war, and terrorism (Masten & Narayan, 2012). The COVID-19 pandemic and related economic downturn are macro-level shocks that are likely undermining children’s development in low- and middle-income countries through school closures, unequal access to remote-learning activities, increased parental stress, and household food insecurity and poverty. While access to quality early childhood education (ECE) has been shown to support children’s schooling and development years later in both high-income (Yoshikawa et al., 2013) and low-income countries (Yoshikawa & Kabay, 2014), little is known about how it supports children in the medium-term during times of crisis. Furthermore, little is know about how cumulative and concurrent stressors such as poverty and food insufficency moderate potential longer-term protective effects.

We embed in an ongoing longitudinal project a study of the medium-term impacts of exposure to quality ECE on learning and development during the COVID-19 pandemic for Ghanaian boys and girls aged 10-12 years (N=2,100). The larger project—Quality Preschool for Ghana (QP4G)—includes a sample of children who were part of a randomized intervention trial to improve the quality ECE in Ghana in 2015-16 and followed in three subsequent waves over three years. The intervention improved classroom quality and children’s learning outcomes during the intervention year, and impacts on children’s literacy and social-emotional skills persisted two years after the intervention when children were ages 7-9 years. New data will be collected in September and November 2020 through phone surveys with children and their parents covering the period of school closures, which have been in effect since March. In addition, in-person direct child assessments will be conducted in January 2021 after schools re-open.

This paper will address three research questions: (1) Does previous exposure to the QP4G intervention increase engagement in educational activities during school closures and re-enrollment in school for boys and girls? (2) Does previous exposure to the QP4G intervention improve children’s learning and social-emotional outcomes before and after the transition back to school? And (3) Does cumulative and concurrent poverty and food insecurity moderate medium-term intervention impacts?

Impact estimates will be analyzed using mutli-level regression modeling, with children nested in schools, and random assignment to treatment status in 2015 as the primary independent variable, including baseline covariates. Missing data will be addressed with multiple imputation. Results will provide new academic and policy insights into the protective effects of ECE during times of crisis, as well as broader global educational efforts in the wake of the pandemic to support children’s education. This is especially urgent in sub-Saharan Africa, where learning outcomes are lowest globally (Sandefur, 2016), poverty and food insecurity are greatest (Lu, Black, & Richter, 2016), and state capacities to respond to crises and reach the most vulnerable are most limited.

Authors

• Sharon Wolf, University of Pennsylvania
  Presenting Author

• Elisabetta Aurino, Imperial College London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jere Behrman, University of Pennsylvania
  Non-Presenting Author

• J. Lawrence Aber, New York University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Esinam Avornyo
  Non-Presenting Author

• Noelle Suntheimer, University of Pennsylvania
  Non-Presenting Author

• Edward Tsinigo, Innovations for Poverty Action
  Non-Presenting Author