Recent efforts to extend and improve Early Years provision make this study of its effects on the attainment of young children particularly relevant to policy makers, parents and Early Years practitioners. The study examined the effects of pre-school experience on various aspects of young children’s achievement which were measured as they started primary school. It compared children who had not attended nursery schools or playgroups with children who attended a variety of pre-school educational settings and concluded that pre-school education can offer children, especially socially disadvantaged ones, a better start to primary school.
Keywords:
United Kingdom; England; Early years; Reception; Nursery schools; Home-school links; Home environment; Socioeconomic influences; Classroom environment; Attainment; Special educational needs
The researchers examined children’s achievement on entering school as measured by a series of attainment tests in:
The researchers referred to children who had attended less than fifty hours (e.g. ten weeks at two sessions per week) in any form of pre-school setting as the home group. They found that these children were not as advanced on measures of the skills listed above as children who had attended pre-school provision for longer.
However, the researchers could not immediately conclude that these children’s lower test scores resulted solely from their lack of pre-school experience. Children from the home group came from more disadvantaged backgrounds. They were more likely than the children attending pre-schools:
These characteristics of the home group sample also have an important effect on children’s test performance. The researchers therefore used statistical analysis to isolate the separate effects of different background measures. They set out to clarify the extent to which each factor affected the results of the children’s assessments on entry to primary school. These findings are explained on pages 4 to 6 below and show the extent to which early learning is affected by factors to do with the child, their family and home environment. The researchers found that the benefits to children from attending pre-school could be seen in the data, even when factors to do with individual, family and home characteristics were taken into account. These findings are set out here.
Differences in the home learning environment showed a number of links to good performance on the school entry assessments (attainment), net of any other effects.
The researchers found links between children's early attainment and their interaction with others.
Differences in family background were investigated and a few were found to be linked to children's learning.
A number of factors stemming from children's individual differences had an effect on their school entry assessment scores.
Once they had unpicked the effect of other factors on early learning, the researchers turned their attention to the specific effects of preschool experience. They excluded the effects of other factors and compared the duration of pre-school experience with assessment scores at school entry. 'Duration' was measured from a child's date of entry to one of the pre-school centres in the study.
The researchers used the following categories:
The results showed that children who had spent more time in pre-school attained significantly higher scores in pre-reading, early number and language than those who had spent all their time at home. For these measure in general, the longer a child attended one of the pre-school centres in the study, the stronger the positive impact on attainment. The researchers found one anomaly: in language attainment, children who had experienced only one year of pre-school actually did a little better than groups with 1-2 or 2-3 years of pre-school experience. The more typical pattern was shown by children with more than three years of pre-school experience, who did markedly better in tests of language than all the others.
The researchers commented that several of the areas they studied were socially and economically deprived and that the home group was particularly disadvantaged. A very high proportion (51%) of the children who had not attended any form of pre-school provision (the home group) showed low attainment. Many of them were reported by their teachers as having some form of special educational need during their first years in primary school.
When the children entered pre-school, aged 3 or more, one third (33%) of them showed low attainment. However, by the time these children entered primary school, the proportion showing low attainment had fallen to around a fifth (21%). The researchers stated that their findings showed that duration of time in pre-school had a positive impact on attainment over and above the separate and important influences of socio-economic status, income, mother’s level of education, ethnic and language background. They therefore argued that attending pre-school could help to combat social exclusion by offering disadvantaged children, especially, a better start to primary school.
The researchers acknowledged that background factors have a powerful impact upon variations in children’s attainment, particularly in language. They suggested that children showing poor language development at school entry need more intensive work on language enrichment. They commented that mixing with other children and adults in a pre-school setting appeared to boost language development for all groups of children, regardless of the language spoken at home or socio-economic status. It also had positive effects on the development of reading and number skills.
The researchers found that interactions with other adults raised children’s test scores but that frequent contact playing at home with other children tended to lower their test scores. This led them to suggest that children who often play with other children when at home may have less time available to interact with adults.
The research pointed to the separate, significant and positive effects of the home learning environment. The researchers concluded that vulnerable children’s development could benefit from strategies that helped disadvantaged parents to improve their home learning environment, for example, by reading to their children, playing with letters and numbers, teaching songs and nursery rhymes and giving their children opportunities to draw and paint.
The researchers emphasised the importance of using measures of children’s attainments across a range of domains at school entry in order to gain an accurate view of the whole child. They commented that a focus in initial school assessments on mainly language-based activities might disadvantage some children of particular ethnic groups and language backgrounds, whose poor experience of English could mask ability in other academic areas.
The study is part of a large scale, longitudinal study investigating how effective different types of pre-school provision are in promoting young children’s progress and development. An overview of this major study, Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE), is given below, followed by clarification of the specific aims of this particular part of the study.
The EPPE study
The EPPE study followed the progress of 3000 children aged 3 plus in a variety of pre-school settings. The initial study was designed to recruit 500 children, 20 from each of between 20 and 25 centres from six different types of provision. These included nursery classes, playgroups, private day nurseries, Local Authority day-care nurseries, nursery schools and integrated centres. Centres were chosen by random sampling within each Local Authority. Since some centres, such as rural playgroups, were very small, more of these centres were recruited than originally proposed. In the end, the researchers compared over 3000 children from 141 settings in six English Local Authorities. The researchers interviewed parents to collect background information about child, parent and family characteristics. The children were assessed on entry to pre-school (aged 3 years plus) as well as on entry to primary school. 95% of the children in the sample attended pre-school provision of some sort. A further 300 or so children were added to the study on entry to primary school who had not attended any form of pre-school provision. The study as a whole looks at the effectiveness of different types of pre-school provision.
This study
This particular part of the study looked closely at the attainment of all the children when they entered primary school. Its aims were to examine:
The researchers examined the results of cognitive assessments upon entry to primary school and used statistical analysis to tease apart the variation caused by differences in children’s background and also the variation caused by differences in the length of time during which children had attended pre-school. The multilevel analysis used by the researchers made it possible for them to investigate the impact of different background measures on attainment. For example, they could establish the effect of a mother’s level of education or the number of siblings on patterns of attainment, whilst excluding the effects of other factors such as gender or ethnic group. Multilevel analysis thus enabled the researchers to identify which factors best explained differences in children’s attainment at entry to primary school.
In completing this digest, the authors began to ask questions about implications for practitioners.
Teachers wanting to offer all Reception children the best possible start to school may like to consider the following:
School leaders wanting to offer all Reception children the best possible start to school may like to consider the following:
A query for community leaders and local policy makers:
There are many different papers published through the EPPE project. You can view these and the final report, and information about the next stage of the EPPE project, (2003-2008) on the EPPE website at: http://k1.ioe.ac.uk/schools/ecpe/eppe/index.htm
You can read a summary of the government's ten-year strategy for childcare, "Choice for parents, the best start for children: a ten-year strategy for child-care", here: http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/educationoverview
/briefing/currentstrategy/10yearstrategy/
The Parents Centre website offers information for parents on beginning education for their children either at home or at school. See the 3-5 years section: http://www.parentscentre.gov.uk/
The Early Years Online website is part of Learning and Teaching Scotland's Online service. It has information about professional development, resources, publications and the latest early years education news: http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/earlyyears/latestnews.asp
A report on PEEP, a programme for parents to help improve their pre-school children's progress:
Evangelou, Maria & Kathy Sylva (2003) The effects of the Peers Early Education Partnership (PEEP) on children's developmental progress. RR489. DfES. You can download the research brief and the final report: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research
/programmeofresearch/projectinformation.cfm?projectId
=14142&keyword=peep&keywordlist1
=Early%20years&keywordlist2=0&keywordlist3
=0&andor=or&type=5&resultspage=1
Munton, Tony et al (2002) Research on Ratios, Group Size and Staff Qualifications and Training in Early Years and Childcare Settings. Thomas Coram Research Unit. Institute of Education, University of London. DfES.
There are two parts to this report:
You can find it online at: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/research
/data/uploadfiles/RR320.pdf
Slavin, RE; Karweit, NL & Wasik, BA (1994) Preventing early school failure. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Tacon, Romey & Ruth Atkinson (1997) Teaching infants mental arithmetic. TTA Teacher Research Grant Summary. Available to order from DfES publications: http://www.dfespublications.gov.uk/cgi-bin/dfes
A 'best evidence synthesis':
Mitchell, Linda & Pam Cubey (2003) Characteristics of professional development linked to enhanced pedagogy and children's learning in early childhood settings. New Zealand Ministry of Education.