Children with Different Ages at Exposure to ECD And their Performance in Schooling A Case in Tagaytay City, Philippines

We investigate a program of Early Childhood Development in Tagaytay City Philip-pines where children are exposed to ECD at different ages and examine if age at exposure to early childhood development program is important to schooling performance. Controlling for child characteristics, other household characteristics and NGO, we find that children exposed to early childhood development pro-gram at age two years to three years have significantly higher mean grade from schooling than those exposed at later ages. Relevance to Development Studies This study‟s relevance is more to Early Childhood Development program providers especially those in the private sectors and NGOs who have more flexibility and possibility to effect program changes if they find reason for such changes. Showing evidence from a specific context that children exposed to early child-hood care and education at younger age has better schooling outcome may provide them a good reason to expand ECD program coverage to younger children, especially to below three years old and hence increase their chance at succeeding in school and life. This paper also hopes to be a good basis for a more compre-hensive investigation and study on the subject.