Early Stimulation and Enhanced Preschool: A Randomized Trial.

Objectives: To estimate the impacts of 2 interventions, early stimulation (ES) for children aged <3 years and enhanced preschool (EP) for children aged 3+ years, and their interactions.

Methods: In Odisha, India, 192 villages were randomly assigned to ES or to no ES. Within each village, about 8 mothers with children initially aged 7 to 16 months were enrolled, receiving ES or no ES accordingly (n = 1449).

Lively Minds: improving health and development through play-a randomised controlled trial evaluation of a comprehensive ECCE programme at scale in Ghana.

Introduction: Many children in developing countries grow up in environments that lack stimulation, leading to deficiencies in early years of development. Several efficacy trials of early childhood care and education (ECCE) programmes have demonstrated potential to improve child development; evidence on whether these effects can be sustained once programmes are scaled is much more mixed. This study evaluates whether an ECCE programme shown to be effective in an efficacy trial maintains effectiveness when taken to scale by the Government of Ghana (GoG).

Inequalities in Children's Experiences of Home Learning during the COVID-19 Lockdown in England.

This paper combines novel data on the time use, home-learning practices and economic circumstances of families with children during the COVID-19 lockdown with pre-lockdown data from the UK Time Use Survey to characterise the time use of children and how it changed during lockdown, and to gauge the extent to which changes in time use and learning practices during this period are likely to reinforce the already large gaps in educational attainment between children from poorer and better-off families. We find considerable heterogeneity in children's learning experiences - amount of time spent learning, activities undertaken during this time and availability of resources to support learning. Concerningly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, this heterogeneity is strongly associated with family income and in some instances more so than before lockdown.

Group Sessions or Home Visits for Early Childhood Development in India: A Cluster RCT.

Objectives: Poor early childhood development in low- and middle-income countries is a major public health problem. Efficacy trials have shown the potential of early childhood development interventions but scaling up is costly and challenging. Guidance on effective interventions' delivery is needed.