What parents and carers do makes a real difference to young children’s development. The EPPE
project developed an index to measure the quality of the home learning environment (HLE).
There are a range of activities that parents undertake with pre-school children which have a
positive effect on their development. For example, reading with the child, teaching songs and
nursery rhymes, painting and drawing, playing with letters and numbers, visiting the library,
teaching the alphabet and numbers, taking children on visits and creating regular opportunities
for them to play with their friends at home, were all associated with higher intellectual and
social/behavioural scores. These activities could also be viewed as ‘protective’ factors in
reducing the incidence of SEN because children whose parents engaged regularly in home
learning activities were less likely to be at risk for special educational needs. The home learning
environment was only moderately associated with parents’ educational or occupational level and
was more strongly associated with children’s intellectual and social development than either
parental education or occupation. In other words what parents do with their children is more
important than who parents are. Poor mothers with few qualifications can improve their
children’s progress and give them a better start at school by engaging in activities at home that
engage and stretch the child’s mind. This EPPE finding underpins the work in programmes such
as Local Sure Start and Children’s Centres that target areas of high social disadvantage.
EPPE demonstrated a strong relationship between children’s outcomes and parental factors but
this was somewhat weaker for child social/behavioural development than for cognitive
development. Research has consistently indicated that there are strong associations between
certain factors related to disadvantage (such as low socio-economic status or SES, low income,
mother’s educational levels etc.) and children’s poor intellectual attainment at school. However,
few large-scale research studies have been able to explore the very wide range of background
factors considered in the EPPE study, especially daily activities in the home.
The parent, family and home characteristics of children are inter-related and causal attributions
cannot be made. For instance the higher incidence of lower attainment amongst children with
young mothers is also likely to reflect other factors, including lower qualification levels and
reduced employment levels for this group. Bearing this in mind, our findings indicate that there is
a strong relationship between a child and family background characteristics at entry to pre-school
but this reduces (though is still strong) by the time a child enters primary school. This indicates
that pre-school, whilst not eliminating differences in social backgrounds, can help to reduce the
disadvantage children experience from some social groups and can help to reduce social
exclusion.
The influence of early childcare before entry to the EPPE study
Our parental interviews discussed childcare ‘history’ before their child entered the study. This
revealed that non-parental childcare before three years of age had several effects:
High levels of ‘group care’ before the age of three (and particularly before the age of two) were
associated with slightly higher levels of anti-social behaviour for a small group of children when
assessed at age 3. This effect was largely restricted to children attending Local Authority and
Private Day nurseries where substantial numbers of children attended from infancy onwards. If
children with higher anti-social behaviour attended a high-quality setting between 3 and 5 years,
then their anti-social behaviour decreased.
Although moderate levels of childminder care were not associated with increased anti-social
behaviour, extremely high levels were. Where there was substantial care from a relative (usually
grandmothers) there was less anti-social behaviour and more co-operative behaviour in children.