Variations in Pre-Primary Education Infrastructure Within and Across Administrative Sectors in Rwanda

This study investigates disparities in the quality of pre-primary education settings in Rwanda, focusing on differences across setting types—centre-based, community-based, and home-based—and examining the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) at the sector level. Using a dataset of 4,875 settings across 91 administrative sectors within seven districts, multilevel modeling estimates within- and between-sector variation in infrastructure quality from three latent factors: physical facilities, access to public infrastructure, and operational quality. Sector-level SES was operationalized as average years of schooling, providing an area-based measure of socioeconomic conditions. Findings reveal that centre-based settings, concentrated in higher-SES urban areas, consistently demonstrate higher infrastructure quality and are better equipped with physical facilities, access to public infrastructure, and operational resources compared to home-based settings. Home-based settings, prevalent in rural and lower-SES areas and often dependent on informal funding, lack essential resources, with quality deficits of 0.73 and 0.85 standard deviations (SD) in physical and operational quality, relative to centre-based settings. While SES is significantly associated with access to infrastructure across sectors, operational disparities remain largely tied to setting type. These results underscore structural disparities in Rwanda’s pre-primary education landscape, with implications for policy interventions targeting equitable access to quality early childhood education through expanded support for home-based caregivers, funding innovations, and regulatory oversight.