School-Based Early Childhood Education and Children’s Development in Urban Nepal

ABSTRACTResearch Findings: Despite the prevalence of integrating early childhood education (ECE) into formal schooling, there is limited evidence on how school-based ECE affects children compared to other types of ECE, particularly in Low and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). Therefore, this study examined school-based ECE programs compared with independent ECE programs in an urban region in Nepal. The study employed weighting estimation approaches, using unique cross-sectional data of 652 children (483 children from 138 school-based programs and 169 children from 50 independent programs) aged four years from the Lalitpur municipality. The study found that, relative to independent programs, school-based programs are negatively associated with children’s development, particularly in the cognitive and socio-emotional domains. The mean differences in these outcomes remained statistically significant with medium effect sizes (d = 0.31–0.43) even after accounting for available confounders. The results also suggest that lower levels of classroom structural quality, such as teacher’s education, class size, and learning resources, may partially account for the lower developmental outcomes of school-based programs compared to independent programs. Practice or Policy: The findings highlight the need for stakeholders to focus on improving the quality of school-based ECE programs to address inequity in the current ECE system in Nepal. AcknowledgmentsI would like to extend my sincere gratitude to Sarthak Shiksha for providing access to the data used in this study. I would also like to acknowledge the valuable contributions of Professor Oren Pizmony-Levy at Teachers College, Columbia University, who provided insightful feedback during the initial stages of this study as part of my master’s thesis, and Professor Dana McCoy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who offered valuable suggestions during the revision of this paper. Furthermore, I would like to express my appreciation to the participating children and the enumerators who collected the data in the Lalitpur municipality for their invaluable contributions to the study.Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).