For: the Ministry of Education and Science, and the UNICEF Office in Tirana

UNIVERSAL PRESCHOOL AT FIVE

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How many five year olds are still excluded from preschool in Albania? Where do they live? And what would it cost to get them on board?

For: the Ministry of Education and Science, and the UNICEF Office in Tirana

By: Jan van Ravens, Yale University

September 2014

Content:

1. Executive summarypage 1
2. Rationale and introductionpage 1
3. Arguments to prioritize the five year oldspage 2
4. How many five year olds are excluded?page 5
5. Costs per child, depending on contextpage 8
6. The overall costs of enrolling the five year oldspage 11

Annex 1. Analysis of data on preschool enrolmentpage 13

1. Executive summary

Jointly commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Science and the UNICEF Country Office, this paper estimates the number of five year olds that are still excluded from preschool education, as well as the additional recurrent costs of enrolling them. While the benefits of preschool attendance are well known, the paper presents arguments why these benefits are particularly large when financial resources are assigned to universalizing preschool education for the five year olds.

To this end, preschool capacity in urban areas needs to be expanded by 6424, nearly half of which in Tirana and Dürres. This can be done very efficiently by a two-shift system, whereby one teacher, using one space with inventory and materials, attends one group of five year olds during three hours in the morning, and a second group in the afternoon. In rural areas, 9386 place need to be created, sometimes at higher costs per child. Reaching children in particularly remote and sparsely populated areas may be very costly, but the paper presents a number of models to mitigate these costs while maintaining quality and impact.

Assuming a good and fair teacher’s salary (fulltime for a fulltime job, but halftime for those who teach just one group during three hours a day) and a 50% top-up for non-salary items, we find that in the order of 314 million Leke annually would be needed to close the gap for the five year olds. This is less than one percent of the current education budget. It can easily be found in the budget increase that would result from policy efforts (increasing the education budget from 3% to 5% of GDP) or even from GDP growth alone.

The author wishes to thank both the Ministry of Education and Science and the UNICEF Country Office for their guidance, as well as JunaMiluka, Head of the Department of Economics and Finance of New York University in Tirana, for making data from the Living Standards Measurement Survey available for analysis.

1. Rationale and Introduction

Worldwide there is a strong movement towards expanding and eventually universalizing preschool education. This is driven by insights from the sciences that are directly relevant to child development but also by findings from the science of economics, more in particular the sub-discipline that focuses on the “returns” (benefits, profits) on investments in various services for children and their mothers. Triangulation from both angles – child development and economics - points invariably to significant benefits, especially for disadvantaged children.

There is no need to elaborate or review these insights in this paper. The Government of Albania has issued various policy statements that underscore the need to expand preschool education, such as the Action Plan for Children 2012-2015 and the Albanian National Education Strategy on Integrated Early Childhood Development (including its A.6 Addendum). Another important step was the commissioning of areport on “The development of preschool education in Albania: perspectives, policies and costing”, by Alain Mingat and Eneida Hoxha in 2010. The fact that this excellent report has not spurred the expansion of preschool education may be related to the rather high costs that it estimated. This was due to three factors:

• The unit costs were based on the then current practice, while, as this paper will argue, important efficiency gains will be possible, especially in urban areas, if some relatively minor reforms are pursued;
• The population and enrolment data in the 2010 report are now outdated; this paper will benefit from the 2011 Census as well as the Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) conducted in 2012;
• Most importantly, the Mingat/Hoxha report looked at the entire age preschool age bracket of 3 to 6, while this report will zoom in on just the five year olds.

The arguments for the focus on age five are presented in section 3. Section 4will make an estimation of the number of five year olds that are still excluded, broken down by prefecture and, within the prefectures by locality (urban or rural). Section 5 argues that the unit costs (the costs per child per year) depend on the type of program and the geographic context, paving the way for the 6th and last section which estimates the overall costs of universalizing preschool for the five year olds.

1. Arguments to prioritize the five year olds

The official age range for preschool education in Albania is, and will remain, age three to six. Ideally, all children should enter preschool at the age of three and stay enrolled until they make a seamless transition to primary school. This is the policy in all countries in Central and Eastern Europe, in nearly all OECD countries, and in the vast majority of all countries in the world[1]. It is also in accordance with the broadly shared, scientific finding that age three is the age at which children, while continuing to learn through play, should engage in group learning experiences[2]for enhanced socialization. Yet, the question is: what is, departing from the concrete situation in Albania now, the best pathway towards universal access at age three? Do we direct our efforts at each of the three age cohorts (the three, the four and the five year olds) at the same time, regardless of social background? Or do we prioritize a certain age group?

Figure 1 presents the current rates of attendance for the three age cohorts in Albania. For reasons explained later in this paper, the figure is based on data collected in 2012 by the Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) rather than the official statistics. This is also why we speak of the actual attendance of children, rather than their official enrolment.[3]

Figure 1. Children that are attending or excluded from preschool education, by age (2012)

It is clear from figure 1 that large numbers of children aged three and four are excluded from preschool education: 86.8% and 69.3% respectively. To includeall these children may take a long time. And given the higher unit costs[4] it will also require considerable financial resources.

Less extreme is the situation for the five year olds, where 58.5% are attending and 41.5% is excluded. At these rates, the relative deprivation of the excluded children tends to become inacceptable: in many primary classrooms in the country, the children with preschool experience are in the majority so that teachers may have the inclination – consciously or subconsciously – to base their teaching on the ones with preschool experience rather than the ones without. For the latter it will become increasingly difficult to survive the lower grades without repeating grades or without low learning achievement. And in areas and communities where few children have preschool experience at all, entire schools may stay behind compared to the national level, seeing few of their students progress to higher education levels.

A second set of arguments to focus on the five year olds lies in the fact that attendance of - and exclusion from - preschool is never socially neutral. Consistently, household surveys from around the world show that children from low income groups, with lowly educated mothers, and from rural areas, are at higher risk to be excluded from preschool. The latest direct indication for Albania dates from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) of 2005 (see figure 2, below) but little suggests that disparities by income, maternal education and locality have eased since that year. Hence, it is much more appropriate to focus on the excluded five year olds than to pursue a more general strategy of expansion across all age groups, which could lead us to a situation where, in a manner of speaking, the 90% most advantaged children of three, four and five years old are enrolled, and the 10% most disadvantaged of any age remain excluded.

Figure 2. Disparities in access to ECE by location, mother’s education and income

Finally, there is a set of arguments in the area of “impact” that point to prioritizing the five year olds. Many studies have measured the influence that attending preschool education has on a child’s early competences. Rigorous secondary analysis of these studies has shown that more years of preschool seem to be related to larger gains, but the added impact of an additional year is often smaller than the gains typically experienced (……) from one year of participation.[5] In other words, the money that the government of Albania would have to invest to provide the currently excluded five year olds with one year of good preschool education yields a much higher return than investing that same amount of money in a second or third year or preschool for the more advantaged children.

Hereby, we need to keep in mind that the (initial) impact of attending preschool on a child’s competences spills over: via the child’s later performance in education and in work, towards the entire economy. This effect is stronger for disadvantaged children. Shorthand, there is a wealth of arguments to quickly universalize preschool education for the five year olds, whether we look at child development, at child rights, or at the wider economy.

1. How many five year olds are excluded?

To estimate the costs of universalizing preschool for the five year olds, we need to know, first, how many are currently excluded[6], and second what one year of preschool costs per child (the unit cost). While the latter question will be the subject for the next section, it is important that unit costs vary according to location (urban, rural, mountain). So ideally, the assessment of the number of excluded children in this section would take this variation into account. However, data limitations force us to restrict ourselves to the distinction between children in urban areas and those in rural areas.

In order to estimate the number of excluded five year olds by prefecture, the most logical approach would have been to derive the numbers of enrolled five year olds per prefecture from the official enrolment statistics, and to subtract these from the total number of five year olds from the official population data. This approach has been tried but revealed that official enrolment statistics are not reliable.

Confronting the official enrolment statistics with the population data results in an overall enrolment ratio for ages three to six of 80%, while enrolment among just the five year olds would stand at 100%. In fact, it would actually exceed 100%: there would be more five year olds in preschool than children born in the country five years ago. For the calculations that underpin these findings we refer to Annex 1.

On the one hand, inflating statistics is a serious matter. It may be caused by a desire among preschool staff to attract extra funding: the more children, the more money. On the other hand, this strategy is to some extent understandable given the serious underfunding – especially of non-salary items - that was reported in the aforementioned Mingat/Hoxha report from 2010. It seems that in order to attract sufficient funding to operate the preschools, staff have no choice but to report more children than there actually are. The solution is obvious:

• improve the funding per child and take away the perverse incentive to inflate enrolment data;
• rigorous analysis of the actual enrolment in the preschools, which is best done at municipality level with strong support from the prefectures.

It is impossible to conduct a strong policy for universal access to preschool if nobody can tell how many children are currently enrolled, and how many are excluded in the municipalities.

In the absence of reliable enrolment statistics, the LSMS is our lifesaver. It offers attendance rates broken down by locality (urban versus rural). However, it has one important caveat that needs to be kept in mind throughout the analysis: LSMS is a survey and not a census. Hence it is based on a sample. This sample is large enough to be fairly representative, hence reliable, for the country as a whole. But broken down by prefecture, the number of observations is often far too low to be seen as reliable. And so the reader needs to keep in mind that statements at national level based on LSMS are reliable, but statements at prefecture level can only be received as indicative. For a strong basis for policy and implementation, municipalities – with oversight from prefectures and with guidance from the Ministry - should produce a reliable headcount of the numbers of five year olds that are attending preschool and of those who are excluded from it. Table 1 presents the general picture of preschool attendance, broken down by age and locality (urban versus rural).

Table 1. Preschool attendance according to LSMS, 2012

Overall / Urban / Rural
All / 33,2 / 42,5 / 22,8
Age 3 / 13,2 / 18,5 / 8,1
Age 4 / 30,7 / 40,8 / 20,7
Age 5 / 58,5 / 66,4 / 46,7

Table 1 suggests an overall attendance rate of only 33% (against the 80% suggested by the official statistics) and for the five year olds a rate of 58% (against 100%+). Clear is the gap between urban and rural areas: 42.5% versus 22.8%. This gap tends to be less pronounced among the five year olds than among the younger children.

Table 2 zooms in on just the five year olds. In the first two columns (on the left hand side), the table presents the attendance rates among the five year olds by prefecture, and within these by locality (urban versus rural). The table then makes the step from attendance rates (in percentages) to attendance in absolute numbers of children aged five (3rd and 4th column from the left).This done by multiplying the attendance rates from LSMS with the absolute number of five year olds, by prefecture and by urban/rural[7]. Finally, the numbers of attending five year olds were subtracted from the population data, thus finding the absolute number of not attending five year olds, again for each prefecture and distinguishing urban and rural (the three columns on the right hand side).

Table 2. Preschool attendance among five year olds by prefecture and locality, 2011/2012

Attending, in % / Attending, absolute / Not attending, absolute
Urban / Rural / Urban / Rural / Urban / Rural / Total
BERAT / 89,26 / 69,47 / 600 / 647 / 72 / 284 / 357
DIBER / 33,25 / 17,23 / 169 / 254 / 339 / 1220 / 1558
DURRES / 38,2 / 72,78 / 945 / 699 / 1529 / 261 / 1790
ELBASAN / 85,38 / 28,15 / 1130 / 652 / 194 / 1665 / 1859
FIER / 46,96 / 27,71 / 638 / 630 / 721 / 1644 / 2364
GJIROKASTER / 81,98 / 82,31 / 306 / 259 / 67 / 56 / 123
KORCE / 37,91 / 100 / 326 / 1551 / 535 / 0 / 535
KUKES / 59,83 / 23,93 / 272 / 221 / 183 / 701 / 884
LEZHE / 61,81 / 42,11 / 579 / 322 / 358 / 442 / 800
SHKODER / 67,39 / 13,39 / 744 / 211 / 360 / 1362 / 1722
TIRANE / 74,69 / 52,41 / 4576 / 1718 / 1551 / 1560 / 3110
VLORE / 60,99 / 70,28 / 809 / 452 / 517 / 191 / 709
Average / 66,43 / 46,65
Total / 11094 / 7614 / 6424 / 9386 / 15810

Table 3 summarizes the findings for Albania as a whole. It shows that the five year olds are almost equally divided over urban and rural areas (17519 against 17001). Attendance in urban areas is much higher at 11094 against 7614. Consequently, most of the excluded five year olds live in rural areas: 9386 against 6424.

Table 3. Preschool attendance among five year olds in absolute numbers 2011/2012.

Urban / Rural / Total
Attending / 11094 / 7614 / 18709
Not attending / 6424 / 9386 / 15810
Total / 17519 / 17001 / 34519

Once again it should be emphasized that the attendance data are from the LSMS which is a survey, not a census. The sample is large enough to be reliable at national level (table 3), but at the level of the prefectures (table 2) findings should be interpreted with utmost caution. The findings should be seen as indicative, and should be backed up by local investigation.

1. Costs per child, depending on context

Knowing the number number of excluded children from the previous section – while keeping in mind the warning at the end of it – we can now address the unit costs. This is what it costs to enroll one five year old child in a preschool program during one year. Once we know the costs per child per year, we can multiply this with the total number of excluded children, finding what it will cost on an annual basis to universalize preschool enrolment at age five.

However, there are two things complicate this exercise. First, unit costs depend on the type of program. Full daycare, with meals and dormitories, costs four to five times more per child than programs that focus strongly on child development and school-readiness. For the latter programs, some countries use the following rule of thumb:

3 hours per day * 5 days per week * 40 weeks per month = 600 hours

This 600 hour program is based on the finding that the total number of hours of attendance per day can remain limited to only three (even 2.5 hours can be sufficient), as long as there is regularity over time. So a frequency of five days per week, maintained throughout most of the year with only some minor interruptions that follow the school calendar, would be ideal. The great advantage of the three hour program compared with the four hours of the current “without meal” modality of Albania, is that the three hours per day formula allow a two-shift system in the larger towns and cities. One teacher, using one space with inventory and materials, can attend two groups per day: one from 09:00-12:00 o’clock and another from 13:00-16:00, for example. Together with the time needed for preparation and miscellaneous activities, this would result in a fulltime job of eight hours per day.This may meet with some resistance among teachers who are used to teaching four hours per day in the without meal program and receiving a fulltime salary, but this is an inefficiency that no country can afford to continue. The advantage of the two-shift model is enormous: if each group has around 20 children, we have a pedagogical pupil-to-teacher ratio of 20, but an economic pupil-to-teacher ratio of 40. In other words, costs per child are reduced significantly, while quality remains unaffected.