Early Childhood Education, Child Development and School Readiness: Evidence from Zambia

Abstract

While early childhood education has received increasing attention in the developing world in recent years, relatively little evidence is available from sub-Saharan Africa on its effects on child development and subsequent school enrolment. We use a prospective case-control design to evaluate the developmental impact of a community-based early childhood center in an urban area in Zambia. Comparing 40 children attending the center to 40 children not attending the center from the same community, we find that center attendance was associated with significantly better performance in an assessment of task orientation, and was also weakly associated with increased letter familiarity. We also observed higher performance among center students on tests of receptive language and pencil-related fine motor skills. These associations were, however, smaller and not statistically significant. We conducted a follow-up one year after the initial assessment, when children were seven years old and should have been in first grade. At follow-up, 27% of non-attendees were not yet enrolled in primary school, compared to just 11% of center students, suggesting that participation in early education encourages a timely transition into first grade.

Association between early childhood exposure to malaria and children’s pre-school development: evidence from the Zambia early childhood development project

“…To the extent that some parents or guardians managed to shield their children from the parasite, the analyses presented here do not estimate the effect of exposure to malaria in an uncontrolled environment, but, rather, the effect of malaria exposure conditional on the average parental efforts to protect their children. The effect of malaria on child development may also be mediated by attendance of early childhood programmes, an institution less than 30% of Zambian children currently benefit from [34]. …”

School effects on non-verbal intelligence and nutritional status in rural Zambia

“…This finding may be related to the fact that Zambia, like many countries, is currently struggling to improve health and education services within a context of limited resources. That is, early childhood education in these countries lack full government support and therefore may be costly, possibly drawing precious family or community resources from one sector (nutrition) to another (education) (Zuilkowski, Fink, Moucheraud, & Matafwali, 2012). Also, quality control and monitoring of early childhood facilities in Zambia are non-existent; while some preschools of high quality may offer a nutritional component (which have been found to increase BMI; Attanasio, Maro, & Vera-Hernández, 2013), others may not (Kaneneka, 2013; Matafwali & Munsaka, 2011; Zuilkowski et al, 2012).…”

Home literacy activities: Accounting for differences in early grade literacy outcomes in low-income families in Zambia

“…Originally developed by Dunn and Dunn (1997), an adapted version with 30 items was used. This adapted version was translated into four most widely spoken indigenous languages (ciNyanja, iciBemba, siLozi and ciTonga) in Zambia and yielded a value of α = 0.83 for internal consistency (Zuilkowski et al 2012). The test presents four visually displayed pictures on each trial from which the child has to choose one picture that corresponds to the spoken word.…”