The Early Childhood Intervention and Parental Involvement in Bangladesh

The first intervention will establish a pre-school program that aims to prepare pre-primary students for formal school and provide them with the skills needed to perform well in primary schools and beyond. The second intervention will include weekly home visit by teachers/caregivers to demonstrate parent-child interactions and learning environment at home. The third intervention combines both.

2018-04-01

2018-12-31

impacts on a wide variety of outcomes including child health, cognitive development and non-cognitive skills such as social, emotional, attention, creativity, and life skills

Name of the assessment tool Age group Area(s) of assessment
Ages and Stages Questionnaire- 1. Language skill; 2. Fine & gross motor skill; 3. Problem solving skill
4. Personal-Social Domain (Self-regulation, Compliance, Communication, Adaptive Functioning, Autonomy, Affect, Interaction with people)

Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning – Fourth Edition (DIAL-4) 2.5 – 6 years 1. Cognitive/basic concepts skill
2. Language skill; 3. Motor skill; 4. Self-help skill; 5. Social-emotional skill;
PSRA: 1. Emotional skill; 2. Attentional skill; 3. Behavioral skill; Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME)

Birth to middle - childhood. Measures the quantity and quality of the types of stimulation ( Learning Stimulation, Language Stimulation, Physical Environment, Pride, Affection and Warmth, Academic Stimulation, Modeling and Encouragement of Social Maturity, Variety in Experience, and Acceptance/Physical Punishment) and support available to a child in the home environment.

Villages are randomly allocated into different treatment and control arms. There are three treatment groups: preschools, home visits and pre-school combined with home visit. Control villages receive none of these interventions. Children are selected randomly.

Children's age are typically 3 to 5 years in January 2017. We collect parental social network data from each village to understand the role of social networks of parents in child development.
Treatment A: This treatment will be available in 40 randomly selected villages. The curriculum is designed for 9 months per year, 5 days per week (Sunday-Thursday), and 4 hours per day. A caregiver will work with a group of 15 children. Each centre will have two caregivers, each caregiver looking after a group of 15 children. In addition, a mother/grandmother will be assisting caregiver every day, and will be rostered once in every two weeks to come and volunteer in the centre to assist the caregivers as teacher aide. A monthly meeting will be held with all mothers and teachers in each village.
treatment B: This treatment will be available in 60 randomly selected villages. We will have different number of children in different villages. We will select the number of children and caregivers will ONLY visit homes of those children. The number of children to be covered for home visit will vary across villages. We vary treatment intensity (home visit) randomly to measure potential spillover effects of the program. In 20 villages, we will have 10 families [out of 30 families] (33% of all families), in another 20 villages will have 20 families (67%) and in the remaining 20 villages we will have all (30) families to be covered for the home visit. A monthly meeting will be held with all mothers and teachers in each village.
Treatment C: Pre-schooling will be available for ALL the children. However, we will have one-third of 40 schools with only 10 children to be selected for home visit (call it treatment C1), another one-third schools with 20 children (C2), and the remaining schools (C3) will have all (about 30) children for home visit. Here teachers will have 3 days in pre-schools, and 2-3 days for home visit. A monthly meeting will be held with all mothers and teachers in each village. In addition, they will have a monthly meeting with all parents meeting at place in village. It could be on Saturday or Friday but the meeting date should be pre-announced, and the caregivers will have the obligation to make sure that parents attend the monthly meeting. They will share their own experiences on parenting and learning environment at home.

randomization done in office by a computer

village is the unit of randomization.

Yes

220 villages

About 6000 children, siblings and their parents in first year. 2nd year will add more children as some children from first year of the intervention (e.g., 5 year old) will move to primary schools.

40 villages in treatment A, 60 villages in treatment B and 40 villages in treatment C, 80 villages are control.