The impact of pre‐school on young children's cognitive attainments at entry to reception

Abstract

This article explores the impact of pre‐school experience on young children's cognitive attainments at entry to primary school and analyses data collected as part of a wider longitudinal study, the Effective Provision of Pre‐school Education (EPPE) project, which followed a large sample of young children attending 141 pre‐school centres drawn from six types of provider in five English regions. The article compares the characteristics and attainments of the pre‐school sample with those of an additional ‘home’ sample (children who had not attended pre‐school) recruited at entry to reception. Multilevel analyses of relationships between child, parent and home environment characteristics and children's attainments in pre‐reading, early number concepts and language skills are presented. Duration of time in pre‐school is found to have a significant and positive impact on attainment over and above important influences such as family socio‐economic status, income, mother's qualification level, ethnic and language background. The research also points to the separate and significant influence of the home learning environment. It is concluded that pre‐school can play an important part in combating social exclusion by offering disadvantaged children, in particular, a better start to primary school.

Approches contemporaines à l’étude de l’impact des milieux de garde sur le développement des jeunes enfants : bilan critique des orientations théoriques

“…Ainsi, outre la non-représentativité de l'échantillon sélectionné par les chercheurs du National institute of child health and human development early child care research network, notamment à cause de l'exclusion de familles à très haut risque (Sammons et al, 2004), il est étonnant de constater que le processus de sélection a essentiellement tenu compte des critères individuels associés aux caractéristiques des familles, et beaucoup moins de la diversité des sites ou micro-systèmes à l'étude. Pourtant, il y a évidence, de par le texte publié par le consortium de chercheurs (National institute of child health and human development early child care research network, 2001), que la planification du projet s'est grandement inspirée du cadre de référence de Bronfenbrenner.…”

The economic effects of pre-school education and quality

“…Details about the exact construction of the variables are provided in Appendix A. It should be noted that past analyses have shown the effects of pre-school on cognitive and sociobehavioural development at school entry (age 5) for the pre-school sample compared with the 'home' group (see, for example, Sammons et al (2004)). They also showed variation in the effects of pre-school for the main pre-school sample in terms of duration of attendance (in months) and quality of provision.…”

“…It considers the effect of pre-school quality on Key Stage 4 outcomes, in particular the probability of achieving five or more GCSEs at grades A*-C and the total number of GCSEs achieved at grades A*-C. 8 We measure quality using the Early Childhood Environment Rating ScaleRevised (ECERS-R) and Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale -Extended (ECERS-E) (on both, see Sammons et al (2004) and references therein). The ECERS-R is designed to evaluate quality of provision for children aged 2½ to 5 years in centre-based settings.…”

The pre‐school education market in England from 1997: quality, availability, affordability and equity

“…However, the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education project focused on both processes and outputs (see Sylva et al, 2003aSylva et al, , 2003bSammons et al, 2004). The pre-school providers included maintained nursery schools and nursery classes, local authority day nurseries, integrated centres (providing both education and care), private day nurseries and playgroups.…”

“…From the point of view of equity there are sound grounds for such a policy focus given the strong associations between disadvantage and poorer educational outcomes. In England, the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education project, a major longitudinal research study of young children's development, has investigated the effects of pre-school education Taggart, 2001, 2003b;Sylva, Melhuish, Sammons, Siraj-Blatchford, Taggart and Elliot, 2003a;Sammons, Elliot, Sylva, Melhuish, Siraj-Blatchford and Taggart, 2004;. In its early stages, the research involved examining the associations between a range of personal, family and home environment characteristics and cognitive attainment of children aged around three years at entry to pre-school.…”