This paper compares the programme gains of participants in five early childhood development (ECD) programmes against the age-performance gradient of the Early Learning Outcome Measure (ELOM), tested in two large scale cross-sectional studies to assess the possible influence of such programmes on early learning and learning outcomes. This goes beyond what was attempted in the programme evaluation, which did not have a control group against which to compare score gains.
The cross-sectional relationship between age and learning gains is thus used as a counterfactual that can be regarded as a control group against which to evaluate programme gains. ‘Effect sizes’ estimated in this way range between 9% and 72% of a standard deviation under conservative assumptions. These are surprisingly large, considering that these 5 programmes served mainly children who would typically attend no-fee schools, and that 3 of the programmes are playgroups with only 2½ to 8 hours of contact time per week.
