From Access to Achievement: The Primary School-Age Impacts of an At-Scale Preschool Construction Program in Highly Deprived Communities

We are grateful to Sophie Naudeau and Marie-Hélène Cloutier, without whose foundational work and vision this study would never have been possible and to Lúcia Nhampossa and Fadila Caillaud for their extremely valuable contributions to this project. We also thank Jem Heinzel-Nelson and Sandra Barros Martins for leading the qualitative data collection activities and analysis. This paper has benefited greatly from the helpful feedback of Orazio Attanasio, Hoyt Bleakley, Damien De Walque, Emanuela Galasso, Carolina Lopez, Costas Meghir, Norbert Schady, Manisha Shah, Dean Yang, and seminar participants at NEUDC2024, MWIEDC UChicago2024 and University of Michigan. This work was supported by the World Bank SIEF Trust Fund. DICIPE was financed by a World Bank and Global Partnership for Education grant through the Education Sector Support Fund (FASE). Ravindran is funded by a startup grant at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Juan Fernando Duque provided superb research assistance. The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this report are entirely those of the authors. They do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank and its affiliated organizations, its Executive Directors, or the governments they represent. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.