results and section VI concludes with a discussion of the implications of our findings for future work.

# **II. Indonesia Early Childhood Education Project**

Between 2009 and 2013, the Government of Indonesia invested USD 67.5 million in the Indonesia Early Childhood Education and Development (ECED) Project in partnership with the World Bank. The project aimed to improve “poor children’s overall development and readiness for further education, within a sustainable quality early childhood education system.”<sup>5</sup> In 2007, when the project was launched, the investment decision was a significant one. As in most other countries at the time preschool services were not part of the compulsory education system.<sup>6</sup> Indonesia had very low preschool enrollment rates, the gross enrollment rate in early childhood education for children ages 4-6 was only 23%, with significant gaps in enrollment across wealth, geographic location, and gender (Jung and Hasan 2016). Government expenditure in early childhood education accounted for only 0.45% of the public education budget whereas 80% was spent on primary and secondary education (World Bank 2014). The project was seen as a way to increase government investment in ECED, to develop a quality assurance system for ECED services and to build on the limited capacity at the district level to implement ECED programs.

Under the project, communities received the following package of interventions. First, a community facilitator helped raise community awareness on the importance of early childhood education. These facilitators also provided communities with training on how to prepare proposals for the block grants available through the project. Second, block grants for three years, totaling USD 18,000 per village were spent on establishing up to two ECED centers. Thus, villages received USD 3,000 per center per year over three years. Villages used the block grants to establish playgroups, which are early childhood education programs intended to cater to children ages 3-4. The communities generally provided the site for the playgroups while the grants were used to buy materials, pay teachers, and provide supplementary services. These centers emphasize learning through play before children are old enough to enroll in kindergarten – typically at ages 5 and 6.<sup>7</sup> We refer to the playgroups established under the ECED Project as _project playgroups._ Third, 200 hours of teacher training were provided for up to two teachers per project playgroup. This training was delivered in two blocks of 100 hours each.

As noted in Brinkman et al. (2017), the project playgroups operated three times a week for 3 hours a day and allowed children between the ages of 3 and 6 to enroll. Project documents suggest that the cost per child was about US$27 per year.<sup>8</sup> This estimate excludes any voluntary

> 5 The project development objective in the World Bank project appraisal document: http://projects.worldbank.org/ P089479/early-childhood-education-development-project?lang=en.

> 6 This is still true today.

> 7 While several types of early childhood services exist in Indonesia, the two most common types of pre-primary education are playgroups ( _Kelompok Bermain, KB_ ) under the Ministry of Education and Culture, and kindergartens, which refer to both kindergarten ( _Taman Kanak-kanak, TK_ ) under the Ministry of Education and Culture and Islamic kindergarten ( _Radhatul Athfal, RA)_ under the Ministry of Religious Affairs. In contrast to playgroups, kindergartens cater to children ages 5-6 and focus on preparing children for primary school.

> 8 This is calculated by dividing total project costs for implementation of the community-based component (US$54 million over 3 years) by the actual number of children (673,162 children) reported to have enrolled in the 3,000 villages where the program operated. This information is drawn from the Implementation Status and Results (ISR) Report no. 11 of the project. This is available online at <u>http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/684441468267567691/pdf/ISR-DisclosableP089479-12-29-2013-1388324682405.pdf. All costs are per child per year and in 2014US$.</u>

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