The 8 aims of the EPPE Project
• To produce a detailed description of the 'career paths' of a large sample of children and
their families between entry into pre-school education and completion (or near completion)
of Key Stage 1.
• To compare and contrast the developmental progress of 3,000+ children from a wide
range of social and cultural backgrounds who had differing pre-school experiences.
• To separate out the effects of pre-school experience from the effects of primary schooling.
• To establish whether some pre-school centres are more effective than others in promoting
children's cognitive and social/behavioural development.
• To identify the individual characteristics (structural and process) of pre-school education in
those centres found to be most effective.
• To investigate differences in the progress of different groups of children, e.g. children who
do not have English as their first language, children from disadvantaged backgrounds and
both genders.
• To investigate the medium-term effects of pre-school education on educational
performance at Key Stage 1 in a way which will allow the possibility of longitudinal follow-
up at later ages to establish long-term effects, if any.
• To investigate the role of pre-school provision in combating social disadvantage and
exclusion.
The sample: regions, centres and children
In order to maximise the likelihood of identifying the effects of individual centres and also the
effects of various types of provision, the EPPE sample was stratified by type of centre and
geographical location.
• Six English Local Authorities (LAs) in five regions were chosen strategically to participate
in the research. These were selected to cover provision in urban, suburban and rural
areas and a range of ethnic diversity and social disadvantage. (The parallel study in
Northern Ireland [Melhuish et al., 2000a], enables comparison of findings across different
geographical contexts).
• Six main types of provision are included in the study (the most common forms of
group/sessional provision) playgroups, local authority or voluntary day nurseries, private
day nurseries, nursery schools, nursery classes, and integrated centres (that combine
care and education). Centres were selected randomly within each type of provision in
each authority.
In order to enable comparison of centre and type of provision effects the project was designed to
recruit 500 children, approximately 20 in each of 20-25 centres, from the six types of provision,
thus giving a total sample of approximately 2800 children and 141 centres. Within each LA,
centres of each type were selected by stratified random sampling and, due to the small size of
some centres in the project (e.g. rural playgroups), more of these centres were recruited than
originally proposed, bringing the sample total to 141 centres and over 2800 children. More than
300 children with no or minimal pre-school (i.e. sessional) attendance were recruited in the same
reception class as the EPPE children (at school entry). These children are referred to as the
‘home’ children throughout this report. This brought the sample to 3,171. It proved difficult to
recruit home children due to the increased provision and take-up of pre-school places during the
period of the research. The ‘home’ group were especially disadvantaged, making statistical
control even more important when comparing their progress to children who attended pre-school.