A Cluster Randomized Control Trial to Evaluate the Efficacy and Feasibility of a Community-based Preschool Programme and Community Engagement Strategy Led by Community Youth Leaders in Rural Pakistan

Worldwide about 88 million children drop out of primary school annually. One of the contributory factors is a lack of school readiness among young children, their families and their teachers. To better prepare young children for school, investment in early childhood interventions is necessary. Young children require good health, adequate nutrition and social-emotional, cognitive and communication skills to succeed in school, which requires both support in the family environment and a stable transition to the classroom environment. Preschool programmes are designed to prepare children for formal learning. However, in many low- and middle-income countries there is poor access to quality preschool programmes. Further, the scale-up of early childhood interventions is challenged by a number of barriers such as poor supply (e.g. policy provisions, financing, distance, early child development workforce), inadequate cross-sector coordination, low demand (e.g. knowledge mobilization, agency, community of purpose, opportunities to participate) and weak quality of services (e.g. training, supervision and monitoring systems).

In partnership with the National Commission for Human Development, we propose to implement an early childhood care and education programme in rural Sindh that is championed by Community Youth Leaders. The Community Youth Leaders will run community preschools for children aged 3-6 years, and will also coordinate local community engagement and local stakeholder strategies across sectors to leverage demand-side actions to promote ownership and scale-up of early childhood interventions. The LEAPS Programme (Youth Leaders for Early Childhood Assuring Children are Prepared for School) will be evaluated by a cluster randomized controlled efficacy trial. The primary outcome will be children's school readiness, indexed by both early academic and social emotional competencies assessed following 6-9 months of intervention exposure. The compliance, fidelity and quality of the implementation process will also be assessed in order to understand how these features moderate outcomes and whether community-engagement strategies facilitate demand-side actions for scale-up. The expected outcomes for this trial will include a model for quality preprimary education that addresses a current supply-side gap, and will facilitate learning for demand-side actions to support scale-up across a broad range of early childhood interventions.