Is Early Childhood Care and Education a Good Investment for Egypt? Estimates of Educational Impacts, Costs, and Benefits

Population Council Knowledge Commons Poverty, Gender, and Youth Social and Behavioral Science Research (SBSR) 2012 Is early childhood care and education a good investment for Egypt? Estimates of educational impacts, costs, and benefits Caroline Krafft Follow this and additional works at: https://knowledgecommons.popcouncil.org/departments_sbsr-pgy Part of the Demography, Population, and Ecology Commons, Early Childhood Education Commons, Family, Life Course, and Society Commons, Gender Equity in Education Commons, and the International Public Health Commons How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Recommended Citation Krafft, Caroline. 2012. "Is early childhood care and education a good investment for Egypt? Estimates of educational impacts, costs, and benefits," Survey of Young People in Egypt Policy Brief no.3. Cairo: Population Council. This Brief is brought to you for free and open access by the Population Council. arly Childhood Care and Education (ECCE)— Methods kindergarten or nursery—is available to only some Egyptian children. Expanding The recommendations in this brief are based on ECCE should be a government priority, as E , a nationally representative survey of ECCE is an excellent investment. ECCE improves a wide variety of educational outcomes, including an analysis of1 the 2009 Survey of Young People in educational attainment, drop out, repetition, test Egypt (SYPE) scores, and tracking into the more prestigious general whether15,000 Egyptian the participant youth aged had 10–29. attended The kindergarten survey has a secondary education as opposed to vocational ordetailed nursery. educational The broad section, age rangeincluding encompassed a question onby Providingeducation. kindergarten Moreover, investing to all Egyptian in ECCE children, will yield and SYPE, and the comprehensive nature of the education particularlyeducational thosebenefits from that disadvantaged are greater backgrounds, than costs. module, allow for a unique examination of the long- termThe effect benefits of ECCE, of ECCE. however, could not be estimated by simply comparing children with ECCE to those could be an important step toward greater equality, efficiency, and attainment in the education system. problems. First, the data show that children who Key Messages receivewithout. ECCE Such estimatesare more arelikely likely to tobe have from two wealthier serious and more educated families, and therefore would Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) be more likely to have better educational outcomes regardless of ECCE. This association will lead to • ECCE leads to higher test scores. 2 significantlyECCE increases reduces the probability drop out and of tracking repetition. into of these characteristics occur on the family level, • higher education. thisan overestimate study compares of the siblings effect ofwithin ECCE. a Sincefamily, many one • of whom attended ECCE and one of whom did not, Access to ECCE, such as free government in order to accurately estimate the effect of ECCE. • kindergartens,The benefits of shouldECCE are be greaterexpanded than and its should costs. The estimates of ECCE effects are based on a • particularly target the poor. comparisonThe second problemof 2,478 suchis that siblings. many of the youth in the Why does Early Childhood Care dataset are still in school. They will likely complete and Education matter? additional years of schooling, but it is not possible to observe these future years of schooling in the Early childhood is the focus of many human data. Estimating the impact of ECCE on years of development programs and policies because it is the schooling without accounting for this fact would time when persistent development gaps occur and toresult model in theunderestimating probability of studentsECCE’s impact. leaving Survivalschool. earlyinterventions childhood yield interventions the greatest that benefits have been (Heckman proven analysisThe analysis (time-to-event) is also careful methods to not are include therefore children used3 toet al.improve 2006). aChild broad care variety and education of health, are cognitive, two key who never entered school in these comparisons— this would falsely attribute to ECCE the intention to these impacts, ECCE is considered a crucial part of educate children at all. behavioral, and educational outcomes. Because of as an important tool for development and poverty meeting the Millennium Development Goals, as well Early Childhood Care and Education in Egypt reduction (UNESCOcan have 2006). important positive effects, individual programs show a wide variety of impacts Early Childhood Care and Education in Egypt has two While ECCE context(Nores andin which Barnett they 2010). are implemented The quality can of causeearly childrenmain forms: aged kindergarten four to six. and There nursery. are Kindergartensteachers and enormouschildhood variationinterventions in the andimpact the of country-specificECCE. In Egypt, are one to two years of pre-primary classes for there has been a shortage of evidence on the impact 1 of ECCE. This brief presents new evidence showing fundedSYPE bywas multiple conducted donors. in cooperation with the Egyptian that ECCE is an excellent investment for Egypt, with Cabinet’s Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC) and the2 causal effect of ECCE on educational outcomes. This is a statistical approach called “fixed effects” that can identify who3 are currently in school. educational benefits alone outweighing costs. These methods account for the “right censoring” of students formal curricula. Kindergartens are under the oversight for individual characteristics, such as gender, that differ kindergartens are government run. The remainder betweenwithin-family siblings. sample. These estimates include controls of the Ministry of Education. Approximately half of 4 individuals. Nurseries are supposed to provide care are run by NGOs, religious schools, employers, or ECCE children in nursery are in fact age four to six because Figure 2: Proportion of youth remaining in school by offor a children shortage under of kindergarten the age of space.four, but Less nearly than 40%a third of 1 0.9 0.8 of nursery services are public, under the Ministry of 0.7 Social Solidarity. The remainder are run by NGOs or are 0.6 0.5 privately provided (UNDP 2008). ECCE 0.4 No ECCE 0.3 Figure 1:60% ECCE attendance by gender and birth cohort Beyond year 0.2 50% 0.1 0 40% 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 Proportion Remaining in School 30% Year of School 20% 10% As students progress through primary (here counted as 0% in school than their siblings who did not attend ECCE. Percentage attending ECCE five years), youth with ECCE are more likely to remain 1979 1981 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 Year of birth primary to preparatory, from preparatory to secondary, Males Females Total andYouth from with secondary ECCE are to highermore education.likely to continue from Use of nurseries and kindergartens has been increasing The underlying differences in the probability of leaving nursery or kindergarten (ECCE) by gender. Less than during primary and at the end of both primary and over time. Figure 1 shows the trend in children attending preparatoryschool as a result school, of ECCE when are statisticallymany students significantly leave. Estimates indicate that the probability of leaving school there30% of has children been a genderborn in gap1980 in attendedECCE attendance ECCE. More in Egypt, than at the end of primary and preparatory is more than with50% ofmales children more born likely in 1999 to attendedattend than ECCE. females. Historically, This halved with ECCE. gender gap, like the gender gap in school entry, has been closing over time. The closing gender gap and increasing use of ECCE are promising trends, but many children still remain without ECCE services or with access to only TheAttending changes ECCE in theleads probability to 1.09 additional of leaving years school of school. can be used to calculate how many additional years of school a student achieves if he or she attends ECCE. Earlylow-quality Childhood ECCE (UNDP 2008).Care and school on average. These changes in schooling would Education improves a wide variety haveAttending a dramatic ECCE effectleads onto educational1.09 additional attainment years inof of educational outcomes attainment for all youth entering school that would ECCE has an impact on a variety of educational outcomes. Egypt. Figure 3 presents the change in educational the number of years of schooling achieved by youth. result from universal ECCE as opposed to no ECCE. With One of the most important is educational attainment— youthECCE, 8.1%would more attain youth a university who enter education. school would Likewise, leave school with a secondary education and 4.5% more youthFigure within2 shows the the schooling proportion system), of youth by whether remaining or not in school beyond the end of each year (the “survival” of the youth attended ECCE (nursery or kindergarten). boththere thewould increased be 11.4% educational fewer youthattainment attaining of youth less withthan aECCE, preparatory and the education. increased Figure educational 3 demonstrates capacity sample of youth in households where at least one sibling attendedThis figure ECCE estimates and at the least effect one of sibling ECCE baseddid not—the on the For complete details on model specifcation and control variables 4 see Krafft (2011). that will be needed. Additional capacity would be particularly necessary during preparatory

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