Improving Learning Achievement in Early Primary in Low-Income Countries

From the Aga Khan Foundation (AKF), part of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), this review of research on early education attempts to sort through some of the research evidence on interventions in the early grades in low-income countries and to assess their value.

The Introduction points to a dearth of research on early childhood development (ECD) and education programmes in low-income countries that has limited the conclusions of the research review; however, it finds that there seems to be more impact derived from how development funding is spent on schoolchildren than how much is spent. The review points to studies of physical factors about the home life of children as positively or negatively influencing their success in early schooling - number of chores, crowding at home, the presence of books in the home, and absentee fathers, among others. Nutrition is a factor, as is the presence of malaria and intestinal parasites, and possibly the age when children first attend school.

ECD programmes were found to have a positive effect [footnotes removed by the editor]: "ECD programmes are an invaluable contribution to learning and school achievement (as well as overall well-being), especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. A substantial number of studies from a range of low-income countries demonstrate significant advantages for children who have participated in ECD programmes in terms of basic cognitive skills, social development, retention in school and pass rates in the early years. Research also draws attention to the positive social qualities in these children.

Specific programme features or approaches have been found to have specific effects. For instance, a review of programmes in 15 countries noted that children’s language performance at age 7 was correlated to the degree of autonomy they were given during pre-school and to the preschool’s teacher’s educational level. Aboud’s [Frances E. Aboud] work in Bangladesh is interesting as it found that the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale (ECERS) sub-scale indicators, which were key to learning achievement, were activities, interaction and programme structure. Changes such as more free play time and a greater emphasis on small group and individual work resulted in higher school readiness scores and in better non-verbal reasoning....The same findings applied in Aboud’s more recent research which looked at actual performance in Grade 1. Children with pre-school experience did better than those without and there were clear correlations between the quality of the programme and first grade competencies."

Determinantes related to the classroom include the following:

• the way teachers teach and how much they teach, including warmer and friendlier interpersonal approaches
  
• teachers’ level of education - "Teachers appear to learn new methods best when they are clearly structured, supported and accompanied by community backing."
  
• the creation of learning communities of teachers, school networks, or clusters - "often in combination with teachers’ resource centres, through which more experienced teachers can mentor newer teachers, and teachers can work together to take shared ownership of the practices they are working to master."
  
• the role of head teachers - managing school improvement and monitoring and supervising the teaching and learning environment, as well as promoting professional development
• class size
  
• ability streaming - though the topic needs further research
  
• evaluation and adjustment of paedagogy for the student benefit, with care not to disadvantage students from difficult home settings - including consideration of mother tongue instruction
  
• early immersion in the world of print with instructional focus on both decoding (making sense of letters as they form words) and comprehension (understanding the meaning of sentences) and with a closer look at a structured approach such as scaffolding (building on prior learning)
  
• compensatory reading-aloud programmes for children who have had less exposure to the printed word
  
• similar paedagogical fundamentals for mathematics with the inclusion of hands-on (objects that can be manipulated to show mathematical learning) materials to concretise meaning
  

The document concludes that: "Finally, it is clear that the policy routes to success within larger school systems are too often drawn into a dichotomy between access, equity, and inclusiveness on the one hand and quality, rigour, and achievement on the other. Yet “quality” that is achieved by virtue of excluding or filtering out the majority is not a true success. Equity may challenge quality, but there is also considerable evidence that quality, when viewed in less mechanistic ways, promotes equity, and that it is most often poor quality that leads children to drop out of school..."