Evaluating the Indonesia Early Childhood Education and Development Project

Research Questions 1. To what extent does the intervention increases the availability and utilization of ECED services? 2. To what extent does the intervention improve poor children’s overall development and readiness for further education? 3. What factors contribute to successful ECED services?

Challenges Large number of beneficiaries - 738,000 children in 6,000 poor communities (3,000 villages) within 50 districts Rural, disperse, ethnically different population

Challenges Community driven development project – no cookie cutter program Intervention = providing grants and facilitating villagers on how to use the grant to provide ECED services

Implementation Steps at Village Level 1. Sensitization about the importance of ECED by team of facilitators 2. Expression of interest by villages 3. Map their existing ECED services and unmet needs – select priority dusuns accordingly 4. Appoints teachers, CDW, and VIU 5. Identify a space for ECED activities 6. Write and submit their grant proposal 7. Award grants 8. Implement services 2. Participatory Planning phase 3.Grant Awarded & Services implemented 1. Pre- conditioning

The project will be implemented in 3 waves, separated by 9 months each Implementation Plan Wave 1: 1,000 villages – 20 villages/district Wave 2 Wave 3

Wave 1: treatment group Wave 2 Wave 3: control group for first 18 months Baseline: 2007 Follow up: 18 months Follow up: 36 months Baseline: July 2007 Evaluation Design

Data to be collected Village characteristics Household survey:  Household economy  Parent background  Parent knowledge, attitudes, beliefs child rearing Child outcome data : indicators of child development across domains

Objective of the Impact Study What is the (statistically significant) difference in the improvement of (child/parental/community) outcomes between villages that receive the intervention and villages that do not?

EDI for Impact Evaluation Purposes Can the EDI be used to measure the impact of the intervention? What are the pros and cons?

If we are to use the EDI – Positive implications Type of interventions not known in advance Measure overall child development Only 2 communities (out of 5) will receive the project Fairly easy to administer

If we are to use the EDI - challenges Teacher-based assessment Sample size considerations Need access to Grade 1 teachers We are looking at a wide age range – age 5 to 7 too late to measure project impact? How to complement the EDI data with longitudinal/prospective surveys?

Application of the EDI - Next steps Translate/back translate and determine content validity Piloting to:  Determine the most reliable administrator of the EDI  Determine if it can be applied to 4 to 7 year olds Develop manual and quality control plan