School Readiness Differences Between Children With Kindergarten And O-class Background The Case Of Some Selected Schools In Addis Ababa

Children attain positive attitude towards learning as well as adaptive behavior for schooling from preprimary education. The skills they develop during preprimary education such as pre-literacy, pre-numeracy, executive functioning and prosocial behaviors will help them when they enter formal primary education. In Ethiopia most of the preprimary access used to be provided through a three-year Kindergartens (KGs) which are more accessible to children from urban and better-off families. A one-year preprimary education program named O-Class was introduced recently to ensure access to children in the rural and from low socioeconomic status. The main purpose of this study is to compare the school readiness of children entering Grade one after completing either KG or O-Class. The Child Direct Assessment tool of the Measuring Early Learning and Quality Outcomes (MELQO) was used to measure the school readiness of children. The tool assesses children’s school readiness through four different domains, namely – language and literacy, math and numeracy, executive function and socioemotional skills. Parent/Caregiver Report of MELQO was also used to gather some background data on the household and family status of the child. Data was collected from children who started Grade one in the 2018/19 academic year after completing either KG or O-Class in the same school they are attending Grade one. These schools are public schools in Addis Ababa. Accordingly, children with KG background were found to have a better school readiness score, higher by 0.46 standard deviations from that of O-Class with a medium effect size of .45 Cohen’s d. Children with KG background also did better for each of the domains except for socioemotional where no significant difference was detected. Multivariate analysis also confirmed significant difference on the scores of children with KG and O-Class backgrounds even after accounting for some background characteristics. The study concludes that there is a significant difference in school readiness between children with KG and O-Class backgrounds, in favor of KG. This indicates a risk of introducing a systematic inequality for rural and children from low socioeconomic status who seem to benef the most from the expanded access to preprimary education through O-Classes. The study concludes by recommending gradual upgrading of O-Classes into KG as a long-term strategy for preprimary education.

Get Full Work

Report copyright infringement or plagiarism