# **VI. Discussion and Conclusion**

The analyses in this paper highlight several key results. We summarize each of these below and consider their implications for project design and implementation.

First, the vast majority (86%) of the 432 playgroups established under the project remained open three years after development aid ended. This is particularly high given evidence from comparable settings. For instance, evidence from 657 community-driven development microinfrastructure projects built between 1999 and 2007 in Indonesia suggest that only 72% were fully functioning when revisited between 2006 and 2008 (Kulongoski 2009). In particular, project playgroups coped with the cessation of donor funding by introducing and in some cases increasing student fees. Both our survey data and qualitative interview data show that project playgroups that closed had struggled to find the financial and human resources needed to continue operation.

The fact that many project playgroups would choose not to charge fees at the outset was not expected at the project design stage. There was no explicit instruction for or against this in the project appraisal document. Thus one implication that follows is that project design needs to consider local ability and willingness to pay when designing such interventions. One possibility would have been to allow project playgroups to pick their own fee levels and to build in a mechanism under the project whereby eligible beneficiary households receive direct subsidies to pay these fees.

Second, we show that project playgroups that increased their share of expenditures for teacher salaries during the project period were significantly more likely to be sustained after the project ended. We find evidence that project playgroups reallocated their resources towards teacher salaries by cutting down on some supplementary services (such as weekly food programs) and scaling up others (such as deworming). Motivated teachers are critical for delivering high-quality education. In order to ensure that projects such as this attract the most qualified talent, it is important not only that salaries be provided but that they do not distort local market conditions. As noted earlier, some teachers under the project received payments that far exceeded local norms. Others struggled to receive any compensation at all. Neither situation is desirable and can be avoided if project design stipulates mechanisms (if not levels) of compensation.

Third, the quality of project playgroups – as measured by classroom observations – is a key predictor of sustainability. We find that direct observations of the playgroups are able to capture elements of the centers that are predictive of sustainability, beyond what can be predicted from, student’s school readiness, teachers’ education and teaching experiences alone. Given that these are community-based services and that parents are often able to directly observe quality – both the state of physical infrastructure as well as the quality of teacher and child interactions – it is imperative that projects build in mechanisms for tracking and improving quality throughout the project.

We also find that market conditions, as measured by the number of kindergartens per 100 children, and community support, as measured by the degree of parental involvement in project playgroups are both strong predictors of sustainability. Both variables indicate community-wide support for investing in early childhood education. As such, market conditions need to be studied and efforts made to adapt to these at the design stage. This will bear not only on what types of services are established but how much these services charge and how much they remunerate their teachers.

Finally, when we jointly examine the categories of predictors (finance, quality, market conditions, supplementary services, and community support), local market condition is the strongest predictor category of a center remaining open three years after the project ended. For 23