A Technology-Powered Monitoring and Information System for Supporting, Motivating, and Training Teachers and at Scale

Millions of children in low- and middle-income countries are at risk of not achieving their developmental potential, partly due to inadequate and unequal access to preschool education. These inequalities have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic: in Ecuador, 60% of 3-4-year-old children did not have access to preschool education in the year 2020-2021. To close this gap, the Ministry of Education (MoE) launched 2018 SAFPI (Servicio De Atención Familiar Para La Primera Infancia), an innovative intervention in which preschool teachers deliver individual and group visits to low-income preschoolers living in remote areas. We have partnered with the MoE to improve the quality of this program, through a technology-powered monitoring and information system (MIS) for supporting, motivating, and training teachers at scale, which includes: the provision of tablets with pre-paid SIM cards, the co-creation of an educational app (SAFPI TICS) with multiple functions, and continuous professional development (Reggio Approach). The study will evaluate the impacts of these improvements ('improved SAFPI') on child, caregiver, and SAFPI teacher outcomes, through a large-scale cluster randomized controlled trial.