Evaluation of Preschool Quality and School Readiness in the Context of a Large Scale Preschool Programs in Bangladesh

Save the Children has had success in the past with its SUCCEED pre-primary program. After five years, the program greatly improved the quality of its activities, especially in play, literacy and math. This translated into better achievement by its graduates when they entered primary school (Aboud & Hossain, 2011). Save the Children is now embarking on a second round of pre-primary program development with the Proteeva program. Among other goals, the main ones here concern the emphasis on reading and math, and the transfer to community management. As before, it is working with local partners in five sites around Bangladesh.

The goal of the current evaluation was twofold:

1. The first goal was to assess the quality of the preprimary program at the end of the year, in December, in comparison with the March assessment. Differences among the five sites were noted. The focus was to be on the literacy and math programs as well as Learning through Play.
2. The second goal was to assess improvements in the school readiness of children attending the Proteeva preschools in comparison with children not in these preschools. Because the baseline was conducted during March and April, it was important to examine improvement since this time by adjusting for the differences that existed at baseline. A new school readiness test commissioned by Save (SCI) was also introduced at the endline assessment.