Early childhood education and child development outcomes in developing countries: empirical evidence from Thailand

ABSTRACT

Due to the lack of attention to including early childhood education in the compulsory education system, some families are even unaware of the option to enroll their children at this level. This study aims to estimate the chances of access to early childhood education and to analyse the advantages that pre-primary education offers in terms of child development in developing countries by using Thailand as a case study. Using Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys, we find that early childhood education, especially in child development centres, plays quite an important role in reducing educational inequality. Mother's educational level also plays an important role in fostering educational opportunities for children in their early childhood. Moreover, according to the estimated effect of early childhood education on children's development, children who participate in early childhood education do significantly better in all aspects of child development than those who do not. We thus encourage the government to provide sufficient educational opportunities for early childhood learning and to raise the standards of child development centres for children who are living in remote areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Early childhood education
• child development
• education inequality
• developing countries
• Thailand

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 According to the Skill Toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) framework of the World Bank (2012), there are five steps for skill development to increase labour productivity. Step 1: Getting children off to the right start; Step 2: Ensuring that all students gain basic skills; Step 3: Building job-relevant skills; Step 4: Encouraging entrepreneurship and innovation: Step 5: Facilitating labour mobility and job matching.

2 For instance, a study of investment in pre-primary education suggests that such investment effectively yields returns to society, nation and child development. It also helps improve the life quality of children from poor families. Intervention in pre-primary education can produce better results compared to investment in other sectors and focusing on different age groups (Nores & Barnett, 2009; Heckman, 2000; Doyle et al., 2009; Burger, 2010).

3 The ratio of Thailand's educational budget to GNI is even higher than that of South Korea and Japan (5.0 and 3.7 per cent, respectively), both of which offer a higher quality of education (Pholphirul, 2017).

4 The reason a sample of 4-year olds is analysed separately here is that there is a tendency, due to the fact of non-compulsory education, for some children to not start their early childhood education in their first year of kindergarten, but to start preschool in a later year (second year or third year).

5 Pholphirul (2017) found that mothers who had an undergraduate degree, high school diploma, lower-secondary school diploma, or primary school diploma tended to be more likely to enroll their children in preschool than were mothers who had no education (by, respectively, 7.9, 5.3, 2.26, and 3.31 per cent).

6 For another reason, a mother with higher educational attainment may find the opportunistic cost higher than a mother who does not have such education, so she may choose to enroll her children in a child development school rather than taking care of a child by herself.