Youth Leaders for Early Childhood Assuring Children Are Prepared for School

NCT02645162 | Unknown Phase 3

• 1 other identifier: 3450-PED-ERC-15
• Study Type: interventional
• Target: 300
• Locations: 1 country
• Sites: 1

Brief Summary

Worldwide about 88 million children drop out of primary school annually. One of the contributory factors is a lack of school readiness among young children, their families and their teachers. To better prepare young children for school, investment in early childhood interventions is necessary. Young children require good health, adequate nutrition and social-emotional, cognitive and communication skills to succeed in school, which requires both support in the family environment and a stable transition to the classroom environment. Preschool programmes are designed to prepare children for formal learning. However, in many low- and middle-income countries there is poor access to quality preschool programmes. Further, the scale-up of early childhood interventions is challenged by a number of barriers such as poor supply (e.g. policy provisions, financing, distance, early child development workforce), inadequate cross-sector coordination, low demand (e.g. knowledge mobilization, agency, community of purpose, opportunities to participate) and weak quality of services (e.g. training, supervision and monitoring systems). In partnership with the National Commission for Human Development, we propose to implement an early childhood care and education programme in rural Sindh that is championed by Community Youth Leaders. The Community Youth Leaders will run community preschools for children aged 3-6 years, and will also coordinate local community engagement and local stakeholder strategies across sectors to leverage demand-side actions to promote ownership and scale-up of early childhood interventions. The LEAPS Programme (Youth Leaders for Early Childhood Assuring Children are Prepared for School) will be evaluated by a cluster randomized controlled efficacy trial. The primary outcome will be children's school readiness, indexed by both early academic and social emotional competencies assessed following 6-9 months of intervention exposure. The compliance, fidelity and quality of the implementation process will also be assessed in order to understand how these features moderate outcomes and whether community-engagement strategies facilitate demand-side actions for scale-up. The expected outcomes for this trial will include a model for quality preprimary education that addresses a current supply-side gap, and will facilitate learning for demand-side actions to support scale-up across a broad range of early childhood interventions.

Conditions

Child Development

Keywords

Pakistan; Early Child Development, Care and Education; Youth Leaders

Outcome Measures

Primary Outcomes (2)

• School readiness as defined by the percentage of items passed on a measure of school readiness.

  Cognitive, social-emotional, motor, early literacy and early numeracy

  After a minimum of 6 months of intervention exposure.

• Child executive functioning tasks composite score

  Inhibitory control, cognitive flexibility, working memory

  After a minimum of 6 months of intervention exposure

Other Outcomes (1)

• Knowledge and Practice for Health, Hygiene and Nutrition

  After a minimum of 6 months of intervention exposure

Study Arms (2)

Preschool

EXPERIMENTAL

* This arm will receive the community-based preschool intervention. * The preschool sessions will include 2 groups per day (3 years 6months to 4 years 6 months in the morning session and 4 years 7 months to 5 year 6 months in the afternoon session at the time of enrolment) * Each session will last 3 hours for 5 days per week. * The expected CYL-to-child ratio will be 1:15; however, given the expected high level of local demand it may exceed to a maximum of 1:20 ratio.

Behavioral: Community-based Preschool

Control

NO INTERVENTION

The control group will receive standard services available in the community.

Interventions

Community-based Preschool BEHAVIORAL

* Preschool sessions in community-based preschool * Run by trained community youth leaders from the same village.

Preschool

Eligibility Criteria

• Age: 42 Months - 66 Months
• Sex: all
• Healthy Volunteers: Yes
• Age Groups: Child (0-17)

You may qualify if:

• Resident of study cluster
• Not enrolled in a preschool

You may not qualify if:

• Obvious disability

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Aga Khan University: lead
• Grand Challenges Canada: collaborator
• UNICEF: collaborator
• Yale University: collaborator

Study Sites (1)

Aga Khan University

Karachi, Sindh, 74800, Pakistan

RECRUITING

Related Publications (1)

• Yousafzai AK, Rasheed MA, Rizvi A, Shaheen F, Ponguta LA, Reyes CR. Effectiveness of a youth-led early childhood care and education programme in rural Pakistan: A cluster-randomised controlled trial. PLoS One. 2018 Dec 19;13(12):e0208335. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0208335. eCollection 2018.

  PMID: 30566498 DERIVED

Study Officials

• Aisha K Yousafzai, PhD

  Aga Khan University

  PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR

Central Study Contacts

Muneera A Rasheed, MS

CONTACT

009234864334; muneera.rasheed@aku.edu

Study Design

• Study Type: interventional
• Phase: phase 3
• Allocation: RANDOMIZED
• Masking: SINGLE
• Who Masked: OUTCOMES ASSESSOR
• Purpose: PREVENTION
• Intervention Model: PARALLEL
• Sponsor Type: OTHER
• Responsible Party: PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR
• PI Title: Dr.

Study Record Dates

• First Submitted: December 31, 2015
• First Posted: January 1, 2016
• Study Start: December 1, 2015
• Primary Completion: September 1, 2016
• Study Completion: September 1, 2016
• Last Updated: January 1, 2016

Record last verified: 2015-12

Locations

PA (1)