In order to investigate whether the CPS program improved preschools in domains likely to enhance child performance, we investigate the relationship between preschool quality and performance in the last panel of Table 4 (“Correlation qualityperformance”). Here we analyze the correlation between each preschool quality index and midline cognitive skills, conditional on the baseline variables used for the reduced form estimations.<sup>42</sup> We find that the process quality indices (“Pedagogy” and “Interactions”) are indeed significantly correlated with the midline cognitive development score while “Equipment”, the structural quality index that is the most affected by the construction program (+1.3 SD), shows no significant correlation with midline performance.

It is noteworthy that the indexes for “teacher characteristics and “Classroom setting” are also significantly correlated with the cognitive development index.<sup>43</sup> Overall, therefore, this analysis suggests that while the CPS program did improve some dimensions of quality, it may not have improved the domains that are the most associated with child cognitive development.

# **5.2 Preschool enrollment results**

We now turn to child enrollment into preschool, a key stated objective for of the program.<sup>44</sup> Table 6 summarizes the impact on enrollment into each type of preschool, and into primary school, by treatment status. The measure of enrollment in this table is the child’s status on the day of the midline and endline survey visits. At midline, the interventions increased enrollment into any type of (pre)-school by 10.6 pp, compared to a control group enrollment rate of 43.5%.<sup>45</sup> The overall increase in preschool enrollment (observed on the day of the visit) is entirely driven by an increase in CPS enrollment of 41.0 pp at midline and 31.9 pp at endline (Column 2 of Table 6—the decline at endline is caused by the transition of six year-olds to primary school).<sup>46</sup> Differences in enrollment across treatment types are not statistically significant, with the exception of T2 villages, which have slightly higher CPS enrollment than T1 and T3 at endline (this may reflect the lower baseline availability of SPS in T2).

> 42These regression coefficients can be interpreted as correlations since both dependant and independent variables are standardized. In addition, the _R_<sup>2</sup> is very high (65%). We note that this analysis is not causal.

> 43This is somewhat surprising because the literature tends to suggest that observed teacher characteristics are not strongly correlated with students performance(Hanushek, 1971; Hanushek and Rivkin, 2006).

> 44As mentioned above, follow-up data collection took place from April—June 2017 (midline) and May—July 2018 (endline); the school year for all types of preschools begins in late October or early November.

> 45To interpret the results in a straightforward way, we do not include any control variables in this regression. Including them does not alter the results.

> 46At endline, enrollment into formal CPS is not exactly 0 in the control group. A small number of children in a control group village in the province Kratie reported attending a formal CPS in an adjacent T3 village.

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