Do after-school care programs improve children's academic performance?

Responsible researcher: Eduarda Miller de Figueiredo

Article title: AFTER-SCHOOL EFFECTS ON STUDENTS' ACADEMIC OUTCOMES: EVIDENCE FROM CHILE

Article authors: Claudia Martínez A. and Marcela Perticará

Location of intervention: Chile

Sample size: 2,556 children

Sector: Education

Type of Intervention: After-School Program for Children and ages 6 to 13

Variable of main interest: Grades and School Attendance

Evaluation method: Experimental Evaluation (RCT)

Policy Problem

Childcare policies have been adopted in different countries with the aim of increasing the enrollment rate in pre-primary education worldwide. The literature demonstrates that there is a negative impact on children's cognitive outcomes when they are placed in informal child care compared to children who receive care in formal centers.

The impact of children having increased hours in school days has been analyzed in developing countries, where a decrease in pregnancy during adolescence and improvements in reading and mathematics scores were found in Chile (Berthelon and Kruger, 2011; Bellei, 2009) . For developed countries, international literature demonstrated that the impact appeared in increased college enrollment rates and performance in mathematics, English and science.

Studies from developed countries demonstrate that the quality of this type of program is important for the success of this intervention. Given that the perception of the quality of the program can cause a feeling of confidence in mothers, making them comfortable to exchange informal care for formal care, where their children will have a safe environment.

Assessment Context

The so-called after-school programs (ASP) are carried out under the supervision of adults, ensuring activities such as homework, social interaction, snacks, sports, among others. Evaluations of this type of program suggest that at-risk students benefit most from ASPs in developed countries (Levine and Zimmerman, 2010).

4-to-7 program aims to increase the participation in the labor force of mothers or women responsible for caring for children aged 6 to 13. Thus, it operates throughout the week for three hours after school, with varying hours, but most offer it from 4pm to 7pm. In this way, the program fulfills the program's objective of offering free time so that women can go look for a job.

Policy/Program Details

The program was implemented in municipalities with a satisfactory number of children aged 6 to 13 and where female participation in the workforce was expected. Therefore, schools apply to host the program and are selected based on these three criteria: whether they have adequate infrastructure, whether they have other ASP programs and, if possible, whether their Education Quality Measurement System (SIMCE) score has improved.

Mothers who enroll in the program from schools must be economically active, over 18 years old, work or live in the school's municipality and have a low score on the socioeconomic segmentation scale. These mothers had to fill out a form specifying how many children would participate, demographic data, education, socioeconomic characteristics and data on individual and family work.

Thus, students participating in the program were on average 9.7 years old, in the 4th grade and 47% were female. The average grade for the previous year was 5.6 and the average attendance was 89% [1] . Mothers were on average 37 years old, had 2.2 children, 53% were heads of families and 61% were using some type of daycare at the beginning of the study. The average years of education of these mothers was 9.4 years and, finally, the per capita family income was US$116.

Chilean mothers report that 45% of children stay with one of their parents after school, 40% with their mother and only 4.5% with their father. While 11% of children were left alone at home, 19% stayed with their grandparents and 27% with siblings, neighbors or other family.

Methodology Details

The ASP was implemented in 25 schools in 2012. Vacancies were filled through random selection, using the mother as the randomization unit. When selected, a place was offered to all children listed on the form previously filled out by the mother. A stratification was also carried out in the randomization, through work status before the ASP and whether they had children under 5 years of age.

As program quality also plays an important role in relation to alternative care, an index was created that captures the quality of infrastructure, teachers, materials and children's attitude. This allowed the authors to estimate the possible impact of high-quality programs on the school lives of participating children.

Through randomization, a sample of 1,358 children in the treatment group and 1,208 in the control group was constructed. This allows the estimation of the intention to treat for the observation of average and heterogeneous effects in the treatment group.                                                                                            

Results

In relation to average effects, the program had no impact on average attendance rates, but presented a positive effect, of small magnitude, but significant only for physical education grades. According to the authors, this is consistent with the fact that the ASP mainly offered arts and sports workshops, reserving only 30 minutes for homework.

When observing the heterogeneous effects, the results demonstrate a positive impact of “ 4-to-7 ” on the grades of students who did not stay with their parents after school, showing an increase of one decimal place in the overall GPA [2] . The impact in art is an increase of 1.4 decimals and in language and literature by 12.8 decimals, in addition to increasing the probability of the participating student being above the median by 7.1 percentage points.

The program can provide a safe environment for those children who were left alone after school. For these children, larger effects were found, with an impact of 3 percentage points on attendance rates. Regarding the quality of the program, the results indicate that it does not affect school attendance, but it positively affects the overall GPA, art grades and the probability of the participating child being above the median in the grade distribution – an increase of 10 percentage points in relation to students from programs that present low quality.

In another study, Martínez and Perticará (2017) demonstrated that the ASP also increases female employment. Therefore, the authors argue that the program can have an effect on the curriculum through grades and an indirect effect on increasing disposable income, through female employment and reduced childcare costs. In relation to female employment, the results demonstrate that it is not the type of daycare or the quality of the program that impacts this factor, but rather the provision of formal care for children instead of informal care.

Public Policy Lessons

The after-school program really does not, on average, have an impact on attendance and grades. However, for children who were left alone during this period, the ASP had a greater and significant impact. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that it is not just the existence of the program that matters, but that there is quality in the ASP so that there is success in children's results. Therefore, following the evidence found, the quality of the program is the focus to achieve the expected results in this type of intervention.

Reference : MARTINEZ, Claudia et al. After-School Effects on Students' Academic Outcomes: Evidence from Chile. 2018.

[1] In Chile, grades range from 1 to 7. To pass, you must at least achieve a grade of 4 and have 85% attendance.

[2] GPA is the grade point average.