mothers were not working were identified as being ‘at risk’, but the link may reflect the higher
qualifications and smaller family size associated with mothers in employment.
Children who did not have English as their first language (EAL children), showed a higher
incidence of identification of cognitive ‘at risk’ status at entry to pre-school. This was most noted
for the ‘strong cognitive risk’ measure, which includes a verbal component, but was less marked
for non-verbal measures. At later ages the association of EAL with children’s cognitive ‘at risk’
status for Pre-reading and Early number concepts was much weaker for the main pre-school
sample. This suggests that EAL children who attend pre-school tend to catch up as they get
older (probably as fluency in English improves). Given that EAL children were over-represented
in the ‘home’ group, this finding has implications for practice because such children may have
fewer opportunities to interact with a wider circle of adults and peers and thus find it more difficult
to adjust to primary school. Increasing the uptake of pre-school places amongst EAL groups
may improve the educational outcomes of such children in primary school.
Information about parents’ home activities with their pre-school child was collected at interview. A
variety of measures showed a significant positive link with cognitive attainment and to a lesser
extent, with social/behavioural measures (for example, frequency parents reported reading to
child, teaching songs and nursery rhymes, painting and drawing, playing with letters and
numbers, visiting the library, teaching alphabet, teaching numbers). A Home Learning
Environment (HLE) index was created which showed a strong relationship with cognitive
attainment at entry to pre-school, and at primary school entry. The Home Learning Environment
also showed a link with greater cognitive progress over the pre-school period, and with
social/behavioural development.
The Home Learning Environment was only moderately associated with mother’s educational
level or family SES (r=0.3), indicating that this measure is relatively independent of other
indicators of disadvantage. The HLE index was strongly associated with ‘at risk’ status in all
assessments, at pre-school entry and at start of primary school. Those who scored poorly on the
HLE scale (i.e. those who reported low levels of home learning activities) were over-represented
among those identified as ‘at strong cognitive risk’ at entry to primary school. The results
suggest that policies that improve parent education and encourage active parental involvement in
their child’s learning at home could play a positive role in combating the impact of disadvantage
and reduce the risk of SEN for children in vulnerable groups. The ‘home’ sample tended to have
significantly lower scores on the HLE index, and as such, ’home’ children may be especially
vulnerable to SEN due to missing out on pre-school experience and having fewer learning
opportunities at home. Again this has important implications for policy, increasing the availability
and quality of pre-school provision and the uptake by vulnerable groups is likely to improve
development and thus reduce the incidence of SEN. In addition, for children whose families do
not use pre-school, initiatives such as Sure Start local programmes may help improve the home
learning environment and thus benefit children most ‘at risk’ of developing SEN and facilitate a
better start to school.
Overall, child and parental factors were more strongly associated with children’s cognitive
outcomes than with social/behavioural development. Multiple disadvantage is strongly
associated with low cognitive scores amongst young children, at age 3 years plus. Children
scoring highly in terms of multiple disadvantage were much more likely to be identified in the
‘strong cognitive risk’ category than others.
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