Abstract:

Communities in Malawi establish Early Childhood Development (ECD) centres where children aged from 3 to 5 years are enrolled. At the age of 6, children enrol in Grade 1 in primary school. Community members claimed that graduates from ECD centres performed better in early primary school than non-ECD centre graduates. However, there was lack of empirical evidence to substantiate the claim. This study was aimed at assessing the impact of ECD enrolment on children’s performance in early primary school by tracking the performance of ECD centre graduates in Grade 1 and comparing it with performance of non-ECD centre graduates. Four primary schools which enrolled more ECD centre graduates in Grade 1 were purposively sampled for this study in Blantyre district, Malawi. Performance of 943 children was tracked, of which 159 were ECD centre graduates. End of year Grade 1 assessment results for the 943 children were used to get numbers of children who were promoted to Grade 2, who repeated in Grade 1 and who dropped out of Grade 1. Then promotion rate, repetition rate and dropout rate for ECD centre graduates and non-ECD centre graduates were calculated and compared. The results revealed that promotion rate was higher for ECD centre graduates than for non-ECD centre graduates while repetition rate and dropout rate were lower for ECD centre graduates than for non-ECD centre graduates. It was therefore concluded that Early Childhood Development centres impact positively on children’s performance in early primary school.

Keywords: Early Childhood Development, feeder ECD Centres, early primary school, promotion rate, repetition rate, dropout rate

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