Parental engagement in preschools (Malawi)

In the current study, we test the effectiveness of a range of quality improvement interventions at informal preschools in Malawi on early childhood development and primary school readiness, using a cluster-randomized controlled trial (cluster-RCT). Our study focuses on Community-Based Childcare Centers (CBCCs) in Malawi, which are widespread and estimated to serve 580,000 pre-school aged children in approximately 5,000 communities. Our findings emphasize the importance of parental engagement with children’s learning, and have the potential for broad policy relevance within a context of extreme poverty and limited government resources. 

Collaborators:  

Berk Ozler (World Bank), Tricia Kariger (UC Berkeley), Michelle Neuman, Christin McConnell, 

Findings:

In Malawi, we used a randomized, controlled study to evaluate improvements in quality in community-based, informal preschools. We found that in the integrated intervention arm (teacher training and parenting), children had significantly higher scores in child development assessments of language and socio-emotional development (Journal of Development Economics). We find that primary child development outcomes improved at the 18-month follow-up (when the average child in our study sample was 5.5 years old), but only in the treatment group that received the integrated intervention – with teacher training and parenting education. In this group, children had significantly higher scores in an assessment of language skills and exhibited more prosocial behaviors when compared with both the control group and the teacher training only group. The gains at the child level from the added parenting education were accompanied by substantial improvements in family care indicators, such as how many times a day their primary caregivers read to their children or played with them. Teacher training alone (or with monthly stipends for retention) did not improve children’s outcomes, despite significant improvements relating to the classroom environment and teacher behaviors.  At 36 months after baseline, there were no treatment effects among the 6-8 year-old children in any treatment arm, indicating a substantial fadeout of program effects in the integrated intervention arm. Our analyses suggests that, in this context, the effect of classroom quality improvements was negligible while those of parenting quality were large and significant, at least in the short-term, given that the integrated intervention was the only arm showing improvements in numeracy, literacy, and problem-solving activities both in the classroom and at home.

Publications: 

Combining pre-school teacher training with parenting education: A cluster-randomized controlled trial B Özler, LCH Fernald, P Kariger, C McConnell, M Neuman, E Fraga

Journal of Development Economics 133, 448-467

Funders:

The World Bank, and the Strategic Impact Evaluation Fund