Section Nine: Did Pre-School Experience lead to Lasting Gains in
Cognitive and Social/behavioural Development to the end of KS 1?
Over the pre-school period variations in duration and quality of pre-school experience had an
impact on children’s cognitive and social/behavioural progress. Higher quality and longer pre-
school experience were predictors of better child outcomes measured at entry to primary school.
There were continuing positive effects on children’s cognitive and social/behavioural
development at the end of Year 1. To what extent do the effects continue until the end of Key
Stage 1 (age 7 years)? This is an important milestone because past research has shown that
attainment at age 7 years remains a good predictor of long-term educational outcomes as
measured by public examination results at age 16 years (see Sammons et al., 1995).
This section focuses on two measures of cognitive attainment assessed at the end of Year 2,
reading and mathematics (using decimalised levels measures based on national assessment
reading and mathematics results, combining levels and test scores within levels).
Social/behavioural development was assessed by teachers using an extended version of the
Goodman (1997) Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. A range of statistical methods was
used to analyse data for 2793 children for whom attainment and/or social/behavioural outcome
data was collected in Year 2, representing 91.6 per cent of the total child sample assessed at
entry to primary school (n=3048 children with equivalent entry to primary school cognitive and/or
social behaviour measures)12. Four measures of social behaviour are reported: Self-regulation,
Positive social behaviour, Anti-social behaviour and Anxious behaviour.
Findings for a sample of ‘home’ children, who had no pre-school centre experience before
starting primary school, are also reported for comparison with the pre-school sample. The
contextualised multilevel analyses explore whether ‘home’ children are still at a disadvantage in
terms of cognitive attainments at the end of Year 2 (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. These
analyses strengthen the evidence concerning the impact of pre-school provision or lack of it. In
addition, results from analyses which focus just on the sample of children who attended pre-
school are reported to further explore any continuing pre-school impact related to quantity,
effectiveness and quality of pre-school centre provision on reading and mathematics outcomes.
At the end of Key Stage 1 (Year 2) cognitive findings were generally in line with those found in
Year 1. Once again, the results confirm the impact of specific background influences on young
children’s cognitive attainments and progress. For social/behavioural development the impact of
the effectiveness of the pre-school is still evident at the end of Key Stage 1. They also provide
additional evidence concerning the impact of pre-school and show that pre-school effects are not
‘washed out’ by the end of Year 2 in primary school. However, it is possible that the somewhat
weaker pre-school effects found at age 7 are a result of the accumulating (and powerful) effects
of the primary school. It is also possible that weaker cognitive effects at age 7 are due to the use
of national assessments as the main cognitive outcome measure. These assessments vary from
year to year and they do not possess as strong psychometric characteristics as the standardised
tests of reading and maths used at age 6.
The impact of a child’s background
The results indicate that child and family factors continue to show a significant relationship with
attainment in both reading and mathematics, but were weaker predictors of social behaviour than
of academic outcomes in Year 2. Age remains significant, but its effect is reduced for cognitive
outcomes in comparison with relationships in the pre-school period. The impact of English as an
Additional Language (EAL) is also reduced. Girls show significantly better reading results but
gender is not significant for mathematics attainment. Mother’s education remains influential, with
12 It should be noted that numbers of children sometimes vary due to incomplete data on a few control
variables.
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