Evaluation report
Intervening at Home and Then at School : A Randomized Evaluation of Two Approaches to Improve Early Educational Outcomes in Tonga
·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-sonnet-5-5The paper compares two randomized interventions in Tonga. One supports communities to run playgroups that improve caregiver-child interaction for children up to age 5. The other trains and coaches teachers in first and second grade to improve reading instruction. The reading intervention raised early grade reading scores, while the playgroup intervention improved school readiness only for children of mothers without high school education. The playgroup intervention also raised later reading scores, but only among children whose schools were not in the reading intervention.
Key points
- Among children of mothers without high school education, playgroups raised school readiness literacy domains and the overall score by 0.19 and 0.2 standard deviations for girls.
- For boys of mothers without high school education, playgroups raised the literacy domains by 0.17 standard deviations.
- Teacher training, materials and coaching raised early grade reading scores by about 0.18 standard deviations per year of exposure.
- Two cohorts were potentially exposed to both interventions, allowing comparison on a common measure of learning achievement.
- The school readiness intervention had positive effects on reading scores only in the reading intervention's control group, with effects of about 0.29 standard deviations at the end of second grade (one year of exposure) and at the end of first grade for girls (two years of exposure).
Limitations
The abstract does not give sample sizes, how long effects lasted, or why the playgroup effects appeared only where the reading intervention was absent. The playgroup effects are reported for specific subgroups, so they may not apply to all children.
Abstract
This paper evaluates and compares two randomized interventions in Tonga, one targeting the home environment of children up to age 5 and one targeting the school environment for first and second grade students. The first intervention supports communities to set up and run playgroups that aim to improve caregiver-child interaction at home and ultimately improve children's readiness for school. Among children of mothers without high school education, being in a treatment community positively affects the school readiness literacy domains and overall score by 0.19 and 0.2 standard deviation, respectively, for girls and the literacy domains for boys by 0.17 standard deviation. The second intervention provides teachers with training, materials, and coaching to improve reading instruction practices and students’ reading ability. It increased average early grade reading scores by approximately 0.18 standard deviation per year of exposure. Two cohorts of children were potentially exposed to both interventions, providing an opportunity to compare, for the same population of children, the effects of an early childhood intervention with a school-based intervention using a common measure of learning achievement. The school readiness intervention is found to have positive effects on early grade reading scores only among children in the reading intervention’s control group; effect sizes of approximately 0.29 standard deviation were found at the end of second grade for children exposed to one year of the school readiness intervention and at the end of first grade for girls exposed to two years of the intervention. (Tonga)
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Two interventions: community-run playgroups to improve caregiver-child interaction at home for children up to age 5, and teacher training, materials and coaching to improve reading instruction in grades 1 and 2
- Population
- Children up to age 5 and their caregivers in Tonga communities, and first and second grade students and their teachers
Key finding
Playgroups raised school readiness literacy domains and overall score by 0.19 and 0.2 SD for girls, and literacy domains by 0.17 SD for boys, among children of mothers without high school education.
World Bank documents and reports · 19 Dec 2018