childhood education studies from developing settings have yet to examine whether structural characteristics matter to children’s developmental outcomes even after controlling for key confounding factors such as observed classroom quality (which captures teacher and student interactions within classrooms) and teacher characteristics.

Thus, this study addresses several limitations in the prior literature on the relationship between the quality of early childhood programs and children’s outcomes. First, we control for local characteristics by using district fixed effects. Second, we correct for possible measurement error in observational measures of classroom quality using an instrumental variable approach. Third, we contribute to the growing evidence base from developing countries on the predictive validity of observed classroom quality on children’s developmental outcomes by introducing an extensive set of control variables to our models. Fourth, we contribute to the literature on the link between structural aspects of preschool quality (measured using teacher characteristics, teacherchild ratio, and hours of operation) and early developmental outcomes, which remains understudied in low- and middle-income country contexts.

# **3. Indonesian context**

Several types of early childhood services exist in Indonesia; they serve different purposes and are administered by different ministries. Table 1 summarizes the key features of some of these programs.

Among the many existing early childhood programs in Indonesia, kindergartens, Islamic kindergartens, and playgroups focus on providing education directly to children. Generally, playgroups emphasize learning through play while kindergartens and Islamic kindergartens help prepare students for primary school (Hasan, Hyson and Chang, 2013). Given the focus on early childhood education, these three types of ECED programs will be the focus of our study.

In recent years, the government of Indonesia has prioritized early childhood education and development. The national standard for ECED (hereafter referred to as the Indonesia ECED Standard) was developed by the Ministry of Education and Culture in 2009 with the aim to set minimum standards around (i) children’s development milestones by age; (ii) qualifications for teachers and education personnel; (iii) content, learning processes, and assessment; and (iv) facility, infrastructure, management, and financing.<sup>9</sup> By establishing the national standard, the government has emphasized the need to ensure overall quality in early childhood programs across the country.

One of the key areas of the national standard is teacher qualifications. Teachers must have a university degree and assistant teachers must have at least a high school diploma, in addition to training in early childhood education from an accredited training provider. Teachers must also demonstrate a wide range of professional competencies in teaching young children, which would require significant experience in the classroom. As a result, the national standard outlines clear guidelines on the requirements for teacher’s education, experience, and training in preschools.

In addition to teacher qualifications, the Indonesia ECED Standard defines policies on structural aspects of early childhood centers, such as class size and duration. In kindergartens, the maximum ratio of student to staff is 20 to 1. In playgroups and daycare centers, the maximum ratio depends on the age of the children in the class; for children ages 5-6, the ratio is 15 to 1 while for children less than 1 year-old, the ratio is 4 to 1. Similarly, the duration of programs depends on the age group. According to these standards, infants (age 0-2) are meant to attend for 2 hours a week,

> 9 As of late 2014 these standards have been updated. However, at the time data for this study was being collected, the 2009 version of the Indonesia standards were in effect. These are the standards described in this section.

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