Low-cost private schools are expanding across sub-Saharan Africa and are often perceived by parents to be of better quality than public schools. This article assesses the interplay between kindergarten (or preschool) choice, household resources, and children’s school readiness in Ghana. We examine how child, household, and school characteristics predict private versus public kindergarten attendance and whether household characteristics are associated with school readiness beyond preschool selection. Using a geospatial-identification strategy to account for observed and unobserved determinants of preschool choice, we find that parental investments—including number of books at home and caregiver help with homework—predict both private-preschool selection and start-of-year child outcomes beyond their influence on preschool choice. We take this evidence as suggesting that investments in children support learning beyond simply selecting the presumed best preschool type. We also find independent associations between attending private preschool and one-year changes in early literacy scores. The findings contribute knowledge to the literature on the recent expansion of preschool education in sub-Saharan Africa and globally and shed new light on the role of private-preschool attendance in early academic skill development.

中文翻译：

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私立幼儿园真的更好吗？检查加纳的学龄前选择、家长资源和儿童入学准备情况

低成本私立学校正在撒哈拉以南非洲地区扩张，家长们通常认为其质量优于公立学校。本文评估了加纳幼儿园（或学前班）选择、家庭资源和儿童入学准备之间的相互作用。我们研究了儿童、家庭和学校特征如何预测私立与公立幼儿园的出勤率，以及家庭特征是否与学前班选择之外的入学准备有关。使用地理空间识别策略来解释已观察到和未观察到的学前选择决定因素，我们发现父母的投资——包括家里的书籍数量和看护人的家庭作业帮助——预测私立学前班选择和年初儿童的结果他们对学前选择的影响。我们认为这一证据表明对儿童的投资支持学习，而不仅仅是选择假定的最佳学前班类型。我们还发现上私立学前班与一年的早期识字率变化之间存在独立关联。研究结果为最近在撒哈拉以南非洲和全球范围内扩大学前教育的文献提供了知识，并阐明了私立学前教育出勤率在早期学术技能发展中的作用。