PROJECT INFORMATION DOCUMENT (PID)
CONCEPT STAGE
Report No.: 56290
Project Name / Protecting Early Childhood Development in Malawi - Rapid Social Response (RSR)Region / AFRICA
Sector / Education (Pre-primary 60%)
Health and Social Services (35%)
Public Administration, Law and Justice (5%)
Project ID / P121496
Borrower(s) / MALAWI
Implementing Agency / Ministry of Gender, Children, and Community Development
Environment Category / [ ] A [ ] B [X] C [ ] FI [ ] TBD (to be determined)
Date PID Prepared / June 22, 2010
Estimated Date of Appraisal Authorization / N/A
Estimated Date of Board Approval / July 15, 2010
- Key development issues and rationale for Bank involvement
1. Young children in Malawi are vulnerable due to poverty, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition. Poverty rates in Malawi are high, as noted above, and disproportionally affect young children, which can impede their survival, health, socio-emotional development, as well as their access to basic services. Compounding the effects of poverty is the devastation caused by HIV/AIDS. The prevalence rate is 14% (urban prevalence of 25% and 13% in the rural areas). About 1.2% of children are infected. About 17.5% of all children are orphans; half are orphaned due to HIV/AIDS. In recent decades, many communities have responded to the needs of young orphans by creating ECD services. Malnutrition of young children is a real crisis. The prevalence of stunting of Malawian children under five – which negatively affects children’s physical and cognitive development for life – is one of the highest in the world. According to the Multiple Indicator Cluster Study (MICS), the prevalence of stunting among children 0-5 years is 53.2%, with severe stunting at 26.9%. The proportion of underweight children is 18.4% and 6.3% of children are wasted. Moreover, 74% of children 6-59 months and 42% of mothers are anaemic.[1] Strategies are needed to mitigate this vulnerability, especially during times of crisis.
2. School performance also is compromised because these vulnerable children arrive at school malnourished and unprepared to learn, which contributes to widespread overall poor quality of education. An estimated 65% of public resources are lost due to repetition and dropouts before primary cycle completion. Although Malawi’s intake into primary education is one of the highest in Africa, less than 35% of children complete primary education. Repetition rates average 20% over the primary cycle. Malawi faces severely low retention rates in the early years of the primary cycle – drop-out rate between grade 1 and 2 is close to 25% – and minimal levels of achievement in basic numeracy and reading. Inadequate school infrastructure, financial constraints, and very high teacher-pupil ratios are key factors for these low levels of student retention and learning. While ECD will not improve the quality of primary education, it can help children with the skills and competencies to make a strong start as they begin formal schooling.
3. Investment in the early years can reduce inequalities of opportunity that disadvantage children from low socio-economic backgrounds, children with special needs, girls, orphans, and other vulnerable children in Malawi. Participation in quality ECD improve children’s cognitive, socio-emotional, and physical development thereby increasing their likelihood of enrolling in primary school on time, reducing their drop-out rates, and improving their educational and employment outcomes in later years of their lives.[2] In addition to the direct benefits to children’s health, education, and social development, investing in ECD also acts as an economic stimulus by providing custodial care to young children and releasing mothers (or caregivers to orphans) to engage in small-holder agriculture and other economic activities.
4. The Government of Malawi recognizes that investment in ECD is a cost-effective strategy to meet its development objectives in areas of health, nutrition, education, and social protection. Malawi has an explicit National Inter-sectoral ECD Policy approved by Cabinet in 2006, and coordinated by the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Community Development. Malawi’s vision for children from birth to age 8 is contained in its National ECD Strategic Plan (2009 to 2014). The Government promotes the holistic development of Malawian children in terms of their early stimulation, health, nutrition, protection, so that they can excel in school and in life. The National ECD Strategic Plan seeks to improve the quality and equity of ECD services, targeting an increase in access from 32 % to 62 % over five years by: (i) enhancing the quality and relevance of ECD services; (ii) raising the profile of ECD countrywide; (iii) strengthening the institutional and legal framework for ECD; (iv) strengthening leadership, partnership and coordination in the delivery of ECD services; and (v) strengthening research and M&E of interventions and activities.
5. ECD services have expanded significantly over the past 10 years, but still benefit only a minority (32%) of the 2.4 million children ages 3 to 5. Since the mid-1990s, the Government and development partners have supported a model of community initiated and owned centers for children from 3 to 5, known as Community-based Childcare Centers (CCBCs).[3] As of January 2010, there were over 6,890 CBCCs and 2,027 private preschools. Over the past decade, enrolments in center-based ECD services (including the CBCCs but also preschools and other forms of provision) grew steadily from 38,166 children in 1998 to 771,666, yet the majority of children still enter primary education without being exposed to ECD services. Although coverage increased from 5.6% in 2003 to 32% in 2010, this leaves 68% of Malawi’s preschool children with no access to ECD services.[4]
6. The quality of existing services must be improved in order to meet children’s basic needs and promote their school readiness. There is a need to improve and standardize provision, as human and material resources vary widely, as well as to shift the focus of the CBCCs from basic custodial care to children’s development and learning. To improve the early development and learning environments, adequate play and learning materials are needed, as well as caregiver training to use these materials effectively and to learn to create contextually-appropriate pedagogical supports from locally-available resources. In both single- and multi-country research studies, the variety and quantity of learning materials available in preschools have been found to be positively correlated with children‘s cognitive development.[5] In addition, small class sizes and high caregiver-to-child ratios are structural inputs associated with positive child outcomes.[6] Quality is particularly important for the most vulnerable children. About 20% of the children enrolled in Malawi ECD programs are orphans and vulnerable children, who require special attention to their health, nutrition, and stimulation, as well as psycho-social support.
7. The current CAS for Malawi was approved in February 2007 and covers a four year period (FY07-10). The CAS is fully aligned to the MGDS and is designed to help the Government achieve four key outcomes: improving smallholder agricultural productivity and integration into agro-processing; put in place a foundation for long- term economic growth through improved infrastructure and investment climate; reducing vulnerability at the household level to HIV/AIDS and malnutrition; and sustaining improvements in expenditure management, transparency and accountability. The MGDS underscores the importance of education for economic growth and social protection, and as a mechanism to address poverty and inequality. A new CAS is under preparation for FY11-14. This proposed ECD project will help reduce vulnerability at the household level by improving basic services for young children, including those affected by poverty, HIV/AIDS, and malnutrition. As a pilot project, it will yield lessons that will inform ongoing and future health, education, and social protection investments.
8. The Rapid Social Response (RSR) MDTF provides an opportunity to support the design and piloting of key interventions to improve the quality of the ECD centers, and help learn and understand the most viable and effective mechanisms to support these centers. Included in this grant is a rigorous impact evaluation to improve the understanding of the effects of these interventions on children, and thus, help inform decisions about scaling up the program. The results of this pilot project will inform and guide the overall strategy of the World Bank in assisting the ECD sector of Malawi. The Government of Malawi has expressed strong interest in seeking World Bank and donor assistance in this sector.
9. The proposed grant will help mitigate some of the negative impacts of the global financial and food crisis by protecting early childhood development. By designing, implementing, and evaluating strategies to enhance the quality of early childhood development opportunities for the most vulnerable children – 20% of whom are orphans – and providing child care to support their parents’ employment, the grant will generate new knowledge regarding the cost-effective strategies that can be scaled up in the advent of future crises. Results from this pilot will also determine future WB support to ECD program in Malawi.
- Proposed objective(s)
10. The Project Development Objective of the grant is to enhance the quality of early development and learning environments for 3-5 year olds in pilot areas.
The PDO will be achieved by supporting the Government of Malawi in the design, implementation, and evaluation of strategies to: (i) improve the play and learning resources in CBCCs; (ii) improve the skills of caregivers to care for children and support their school readiness; (iii) empower parents to support developmental and learning activities in the home; and (iv) build capacity for governance, management, monitoring, and evaluation of ECD services. The project will support a rigorous impact evaluation to improve learning and inform future policy development and programming.
- Preliminary description
11. The proposed project will have three components[7]: (1) Enhance child development and learning; (2) Strengthen governance, management, and M&E; (3) Design and conduct an impact evaluation of the ECD interventions.
12. Component 1 – Enhance child development and learning (US$ 1.2 million): The project will focus on improving early stimulation opportunities to support children’s social, emotional, physical, language and cognitive development by targeting children aged 3-5 years in the CBCCs and parents with 0-5 year-olds. This component entails the following activities:
(a) Providing ECD learning materials and support: Each CBCC in the project will receive play and learning materials, as well as hygiene and sanitation kits to address young children’s basic needs for healthy development and learning.[8] In addition to these purchased materials, capacity building for materials development and training for appropriate use will be undertaken under component 1b and 1c. To complete the holistic package, health and nutrition inputs (deworming, vitamin A supplements, and fortified porridge) may be provided to children with support from an external partner.
(a) Building the capacity of caregivers: To improve the quality of caregiver knowledge, skills, and practice related to early development and learning, the project will improve and expand the current training offerings, by piloting an enhanced training package. Regional ECD trainers (five from each district) will be trained for three weeks by the national ECD training team and they will in turn train caregivers and mentors in their regions. The caregivers’ training program will be adapted and expanded from the current 14-day training curriculum developed by the MoGCCD to cover three residential practical sessions (5 weeks total) over six months. Trained caregivers will benefit from mentoring and supervision over the project duration. Caregivers will receive a materials kit to develop play and learning materials for children using low-cost and recycled supplies. As part of the experiment, some caregivers will receive a small allowance to encourage retention.
(b) Empowering parents: Parents will be educated and supported in providing environments that maximize children’s potential. The eight sessions for parents will cover a range of topics including child rights, child health and nutrition, identification and effective management of water, child care and early stimulation, initiation and management of income generating activities, community mobilization, involvement in maintenance of CBCCs, providing community safety nets for vulnerable children. Participating parents will receive a package of information and tools to foster children’s development at home. This activity will be piloted with all parents with children under age five living near target CBCCs in two districts.
13. Component 2 - Strengthen governance, management, and M&E (US$ 300,000): Technical assistance will be provided to build capacity for ongoing, monitoring of ECD services at the national, district, and community levels. At the national level, it will provide financial support to the MGCCD to coordinate, monitor, and supervise ECD activities (e.g., trainings), and to build a national database to inform national planning and oversight. At the district level, 28 teams of district officers will be trained over three weeks to collect and report information on children and the CBCCs, using existing tools, and quality assurance. This component will also include a short training of community management teams to build their capacity to manage CBCCs. Support will be provided for the translation, printing and dissemination of key national documents and the development of low-literacy versions in local languages of relevant ECD resources.
14. Component 3 - Design and conduct an impact evaluation of the ECD interventions (US$ 500,000 – Bank-Executed): The impact evaluation (IE) of the various interventions in the CBCCs is designed to have experimental (causal) identification of impacts of each of the quality improvement interventions. It is a prospective randomized impact evaluation with multiple treatment arms, meaning that by randomly allocating CBCCs into different treatment groups (and a control group) and collecting baseline data before the intervention and follow-up data after the completion of the intervention, it will be able to demonstrate the most cost-effective combination of interventions in improving the cognitive, language, social-emotional, and physical development of 3 and 4 year old children as well as their school readiness and transition to primary school. The various treatment arms (see Table X) include: (a) caregiver incentives, (b) play and learning materials, (c) caregiver training and mentoring, and (d) reducing the child to trained caregiver ratio.
15. The design will allow the evaluators to assess the marginal impact of each of these components as well as their combined impact compared to the control group. By comparing the control group to Treatment 1, we can assess the marginal impact of providing materials only to a center on the outcomes of interest. By comparing Treatment 1 and Treatment 2, we can identify the additional effect of training the caregivers. Finally, by comparing Treatment 2 and Treatment 3, we can identify the effect of reducing child/trained caregiver ratios. Comparing any of these treatment groups to the control group would give us the combined effect of the interventions compared with providing only a small incentive to the caregivers. The lessons of this analytical work will be used to inform the government’s strategy for going to scale and will expand the limited existing knowledge-base of the impact of ECD interventions in Africa for young children’s early development. To the extent possible, standardized child assessments used in other WB-managed IE (e.g., Mozambique, Cambodia) will be applied in Malawi to facilitate cross-national comparison.