However, there were a number of differences that were related to type of pre-school centre
rather than deriving from parental socio-economic differences. These included:
- the age of starting, which was lower for both private day nurseries and local authority day
nurseries
- the number of sessions attended, which showed a different pattern for each type of pre-
school centre
- a relationship between maternal level of paid employment was found for those using private
day nurseries and local authority day nurseries but not for nursery classes or playgroups
- also visits by parents were more likely in playgroups than other types of pre-school centre.
For playgroups, visits by parents included spending time with children and fundraising
activities more often than for the other types of pre-school centre.
The childcare histories of the children revealed enormous diversity across the whole sample and
for children within each type of pre-school centre. Overall, children using private day nurseries
and Local Authority day nurseries had more than twice as much non-parental care as those in
the nursery classes and playgroups, often related to higher maternal employment. Children who
started pre-school earlier and attended for more sessions and hours per week largely accounted
for this difference. There was also a strong association between level of maternal paid
employment and previous childcare use. Those mothers who were employed for longer hours
had a history of using greater amounts of childcare. The socio-economic differences in childcare
histories largely reflect the differential use of types of pre-school centre and differential levels of
maternal paid employment by the different socio-economic groups
What background variables are related to child development at the start of the
study?
Children’s personal, social and family characteristics can influence their progress and
development. As a consequence it is essential to establish the extent to which the background
characteristics of children attending different centres and types of pre-school provision vary.
Only in this way is it possible to identify any possible pre-school effects on children's later
educational outcomes. When the children entered the EPPE study they were assessed on
cognitive and social/behavioural development. These data, together with data from the parental
interview, were used to investigate social/behavioural and cognitive development at 3-4 years in
relation to a range of parental, family, child, home and childcare factors. The analysis provides
information about associations between variables and should not be automatically interpreted in
terms of causality. It is possible that unmeasured factors are producing the effects found. The
explanation of cognitive development provided by the analyses presented here is strong (i.e., it
explains a large amount of variance in children’s scores) whereas the explanation of
social/behavioural development leaves much of the variation between children unexplained.
This may be explained in part by the fact that the social-behavioural measures were completed
by more than 200 practitioners using a coarse rating scale; the cognitive and linguistic measures
were administered 1:1 by a small team of highly trained researchers conforming to standardised
testing procedures. It seems likely that variation in the sophistication and reliability of
measurement available for the two aspects of development led to the cognitive analyses being
stronger. The findings can be summarised as follows:
Parents:
■ Socio-economic status showed effects upon both cognitive attainment and also
cooperation/conformity and confidence. For these variables the children of professional
parents were rated more highly than other children.
■ Mother’s age had a small effect upon the amount of anti-social behaviour. Children with very
young mothers tended to be rated higher for anti-social behaviour than other children.
■ For cognitive development, a two-parent family, higher socio-economic status and mother’s
qualifications were all significantly related to higher outcomes.
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