Section Eight: The Effects of Pre-School on Children’s Attainment and
Progress up to the end of Year One.
This section summarises the findings on cognitive attainment, progress and social/behavioural
development from entry to reception classes (age rising 5 years) through to the end of Year 1
(age 6+ years) in primary school. EPPE uses an educational effectiveness design to explore the
impact of different child, family, and home learning environment factors on a range of child
outcomes. The research explores whether pre-school influences found to be important in
accounting for variations in children’s progress and development up to the time they start primary
school continue to show relationships with outcomes in the early years of primary school. The
analyses explore whether ‘home’ children (those who had very little or no pre-school centre
experience) continue to lag behind other children, and whether duration of time, quality and
effectiveness of pre-school attended still show significant positive effects on attainment and
social behaviour over the early primary school years.
When the children were at the end of Year 1 (6 years old) we administered two assessments of
cognitive attainment, reading and mathematics (measured by the NFER-Nelson Primary Reading
Level 1 and the Maths 6 tests). Also social/behavioural development was assessed by teachers
using an extended version of the Goodman (1997) Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire.
Four measures of social behaviour are reported: Self-regulation, Positive social behaviour, Anti-
social behaviour and Anxious behaviour.
EPPE uses statistical techniques (multilevel modelling) to measure the influence of different
background factors on young children’s attainments at different time points. Similar analyses
were conducted earlier when children entered primary school. A comparison of the results at the
two time points allows us to establish whether background influences change (reduce or
increase) over the first years of school. Contextualised analyses are used to identify the unique
(net) contribution of particular characteristics to variation in children’s outcomes. Thus, for
example, the impact of family SES was established while taking into account the influence of
mother’s qualification levels, low income, ethnicity, birth weight, home learning environment etc.
It is of policy interest to establish the nature and strength of such background influences,
individually and in total, because they are relevant to issues of equity and social inclusion.
Value added multilevel models have already investigated children’s progress over their time in
pre-school l (see Section 6). These analyses were used to create value added indicators of each
pre-school centre’s effectiveness in promoting progress in a given outcome (e.g. reading, maths
and aspects of social behaviour) during the pre-school phase of the study. Centres where
children had made significantly greater progress than predicted on the basis of prior attainment
and intake characteristics can be viewed as more effective (positive outliers in value added
terms). Centres where children made less progress than predicted can be viewed as less
effective (negative outliers in value added terms).
Previous analyses over the pre-school period showed that variations in quality and extent of time
in pre-school had an impact on children’s cognitive and social/behavioural gains. They indicated
that higher quality and longer pre-school experience have a positive impact. This section builds
on these earlier findings to explore whether the positive impacts of pre-school are still evident in
child outcomes measured at the end of Year 1 of primary school.
Findings concerning a sample of ‘home’ children, who had no pre-school centre experience
before starting primary school, are reported for comparison with the pre-school sample.
Analyses explore whether ‘home’ children are still at a disadvantage for cognitive development
(reflecting differences evident when they started primary school) and the extent to which any
attainment gap can be attributed to the absence of pre-school experience, rather than
differences in background characteristics. In addition other analyses focus on the children who
attended pre-school to explore any continuing pre-school impact. Equivalent analyses of four
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