Using technology to achieve literacy for all: The effects of an adaptive and scalable early childhood intervention on school readiness of children with learning difficulties.

Children in treated schools will gain access to a platform that fosters early literacy skills and that can be accessed through their caregivers’ phones. A random group of treated schools will additionally receive an intervention at the school level. The intervention is carried out with the teachers, who, in addition to having a user account to access the application and view the progress and performance of each of their students, will receive a biweekly report detailing their students' performance, highlighting those with outstanding progress and those who are lagging, along with strategies to encourage the use of the application at home. Moreover, school administrators and teachers will be invited to participate in a continuous professional development program in early literacy, which consists of 8 monthly virtual meetings. Each module follows a theoretical-practical approach, allowing participants to access not only the theoretical foundations of the app’s program but also the corresponding methodological aspects for its implementation.

2024-10-10

2025-06-27

- Language development:
o Phonological skills test
o IPAL - Indicadores de Progreso en el Aprendizaje de la Lectura
o Performance in primary school using administrative records from the National Evaluation of Primary Education
- Emerging numeracy - using IDELA instrument
- Socioemotional development: Strengths and difficulties questionnaire
- Frequency of parental involvement
- Program take-up: App usage logs

- Child development:
o Children’s mathematical skills
- Parent’s questionnaire:
o Parental involvement – STIMq instrument
o Student’s socioemotional wellbeing – Strengths and difficulties instrument
- Teacher’s questionnaire:
o Teaching methods

The program will be evaluated using a randomized controlled trial.
The sample consists of 105 schools that will be randomly split into three groups (35 schools in each group).
The randomization will be at the school level and will be stratified by the size of the school. Participant students will be aged 5 and 6. We expect to have a population of 4300 students (41 children per school) of comparable socioeconomic profiles at baseline.

We will assess average effects on all children and we will be able to explore heterogeneous effects using the baseline score of the phonological test to split the sample and compare the effectiveness of the program on children with high predicted risk of SLD at baseline versus children with low predicted risk of SLD at baseline. The study also examines gender-based effects, given the higher prevalence of SLDs among boys.

Randomization done in office by a computer

School

Yes

105 schools (35 schools in each treatment arm)

4300 students

35 schools control, 35 schools app to families+school intervention, 35 schools app to families