Persistence and fading of the cognitive and socio-emotional benefits of preschool education in a low-resource setting: Group differences and dose-dependent associations in longitudinal data from Vietnam.

Introduction: Four analytic approaches examined the effectiveness of preschool education in Vietnam, which provides a context in which national curricula and teaching standards for preschools and schools, high levels of preschool attendance, and fee subsidies for disadvantaged children, limit the heterogeneity in children's experiences that often obscure the outcomes associated with preschool attendance. Methods: The Young Lives Study provided longitudinal data on children's receptive vocabulary, mathematics, and life satisfaction at 5, 8, 12, and 15 years of age, and on their self-concept and relationships at 12 and 15 years. Results: The first analysis found that children who attended preschool ( Discussion: Together, the results suggest that preschool attendance had a small but meaningful positive association with Vietnamese children's cognitive skills and life satisfaction that persisted for at least 10 years. These findings provide insights into the scale, scope, and longevity of effects that can be achieved from scaled-up preschool programs under resource-constrained conditions.