A Randomized Impact Evaluation of Early Childhood Development in Rural Mozambique 2014: Follow-up (Mozambique)

Abstract

Starting in 2008, Save the Children implemented a center-based community driven preschool model in rural areas of the Gaza Province in Southern Mozambique. The project financed the construction, equipment and training for 67 classrooms in 30 communities, to provide Early Childhood Development (ECD) activities for children aged between 36 and 59 months. As part of its design, the program included an experimental impact evaluation (using Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial) whereby the 30 intervention communities were selected at random from a pool of 76 eligible sites. Before the preschool activities initiated, a baseline survey was carried out in 2008 involving 76 communities in Gaza Province across the 3 different districts. Two years later, in 2010, the same 2,000 households participated in a mid-line survey to evaluate the impact of the program after one or two years of potential exposure to pre-school. The present data correspond to the follow-up survey that took place in 2014, namely 6-years after the beginning of the intervention when the targeted children were supposed to be in primary school. The impact evaluation has four main research questions: (1) to evaluate the efficiency of low-cost community-based preschool program in a disadvantaged rural African setting in terms of cognitive, socio-emotional skills as well as learning outcomes for the children, (2) to evaluate the effects of such intervention on school enrollment, attendance, and progress (i.e. grade promotion, repetition, dropout); (3) to assess whether parenting practices and knowledge can be durably influenced by community-based ECD program; (4) To identify potential spill-over effects of the program on health, education, productivity and labor market outcomes of siblings and parents of preschoolers. Field work was carried out from April to November 2014. In addition to household surveys and cognitive assessments of children (in literacy, numeracy and non-verbal reasoning), data from primary school directors, pre-school animators and community leaders were collected during this period. From the original 2,000 target children of the 2008 survey, more than 90% of them were successfully tracked and geo-referenced.