The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL), the global research center working to reduce poverty by ensuring that policy is informed by scientific evidence, has recently highlighted TSA’s Springboard to School Readiness project. The new resource designed to provide an overview of insights produced from randomized evaluations of interventions designed to improve social policy in 20 countries across Europe, mentions the impact evaluation by the World Bank and J-PAL affiliate researchers on TSA’s first-in-its-kind intervention to establish if there are financial barriers to kindergarten attendance for disadvantaged children in Bulgaria.
The resource includes emerging lessons from a range of sectors, including education, labor, finance, governance, and social inclusion. TSA’s intervention is included in the list as it measures the impact of providing information and incentives on the kindergarten participation rates of children from minority ethnic groups, especially Roma children, in Bulgaria and points towards important policy lessons for the impact of free kindergarten of enrollment and attendance. It also provides findings on parental aspirations and child learning and development.