The impact of pre-school on young children's cognitive attainments at entry to reception.
This digest found in
Early years
What conclusions did the researchers draw from their study?
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.
