SAJCE 

South African Journal of Childhood Education 2(2):a15 

While early childhood education has received increasing attention in the developing world in recent years, relatively little evidence is available from sub-Saharan Africa on its effects on child development and subsequent school enrolment. We use a prospective case-control design to evaluate the developmental impact of a community-based early childhood centre in an urban area in Zambia. Comparing 40 children attending the centre to 40 children not attending the centre from the same community, we find that centre attendance was associated with significantly better performance in an assessment of task orientation and was also weakly associated with increased letter familiarity. We also observed higher performance among centre students on tests of receptive language and pencil-related fine motor skills. These associations were, however, smaller and not statistically significant. We conducted a follow-up one year after the initial assessment when children were seven years old and should have been in first grade. At follow-up, 27% of non-attendees were not yet enrolled in primary school, compared to just 11% of centre students, suggesting that participation in early education encourages a timely transition into first grade. 

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