Exploring Developmental Outcomes for Children Attending Community-based Pre-Schools in the Ermera and Viqueque Municipalities of Timor-Leste

There is a substantial body of evidence which indicates that early childhood programmes have a positive effect on children's school readiness, academic achievement, and social and emotional development. Indeed, these benefits can last into adulthood. Based on this evidence base, many countries that strive to build their early childhood education offer to enhance later chances of prosperity. LINKS is an NIHR-funded study, carried out by a team from Queen's University Belfast and Ulster University, with support from UNICEF. The project aims to explore the impact of early childhood development programmes on social cohesion/peacebuilding in six conflict-affected low- and middle-income countries (LMICs); Timor-Leste, Viet Nam, Mali, Egypt, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. This paper will focus on research carried out as part of the LINKS study in Timor-Leste which aimed to evaluate the impact of UNICEF community-based alternative pre-schools (CBAPs) in Timor-Leste. This research, carried out in 2020, employed a quasi-experimental pre- post-test design with a public pre-school control group. A total of 607 children were recruited to participate from 33 pre-schools: 508 completed post-tests after nine months of pre-school exposure to the CBAP programme. The East-Asia Pacific Early Childhood Development Scales (EAP-ECDS) were used to assess the development of children in the current study. Results of the post-test suggest that despite differences in time children spend in pre-school and infrastructure between the school types, attendance at CBAPs appears to close the developmental gap seen at the pre-test (baseline) between children in the two groups. The findings underline the importance of pre-school access and early learning experiences to the development of children at the highest risk of not reaching their developmental potential. The results point to the need to scale the intervention and to carry out an experimental effectiveness evaluation of this promising programme.