Children ‘at risk’ of learning or behavioural difficulties are helped by pre-school; integrated
settings and nursery schools are particularly beneficial.
7. The importance of home learning and support for parents.
The quality of the learning environment at home (where parents are actively engaged in activities
with children) promoted intellectual and social development in all children. Although parent’s
social class and levels of education were related to child outcomes the quality of the home
learning environment was more important and only moderately associated with social class or
mothers qualification levels. What parents do is more important than who they are. For this
reason pre-school and school settings that do not include parent support and education are
missing an important element in raising achievement and enhancing social and behavioural
development.
Major findings at end of Key Stage 1
1. Lasting effects
The beneficial effects of pre-school remained evident throughout Key Stage 1, although some
outcomes were not as strong as they had been at school entry. The most likely explanation for
the diminishing ‘pre-school effect’ is the powerful influence of the primary school on children’s
development. By the end of Year 2 most children had been in their primary school for three
years longer than the majority of children had been in pre-school. An alternate explanation for
the finding that pre-school effects were stronger at age 6 than at age 7, is the use of national
assessments as the main academic outcome at the at the end of Key Stage 1. These vary from
year to year and may not have the psychometric strength of the standardised reading and maths
assessments we used at age 6.
The main effects of pre-school are present at school entry; these strong effects can be seen in
the difference between school-entry profiles of the ‘home’ children and the pre-school group.
The influence of pre-school is also demonstrated in the ‘dose effect’ by which the more pre-
school experience a child has, the more progress they make in the period 3-5 years. However,
once children enter school at reception, the pre-school children do not make more gains than
the ‘home’ children. This suggests that the impact of pre-school operates through a stronger
start to school and NOT through increased capacity to learn more in subsequent years,
2. Duration and quality
The number of months a child attended pre-school continued to have an effect on their progress
through Key Stage 1. This effect was stronger for academic skills than for social/behavioural
development. Pre-school quality was significantly related to children’s scores on standardised
tests of reading and mathematics at aged 6. At aged 7 the relationship between quality and
academic attainment was somewhat weaker and the effect of quality on all forms of
social/behavioural development, including anti-social behaviour, was no longer significant.
However, the impact of a pre-school centres effectiveness was still significant at the end of Key
Stage 1 on social/behavioural outcomes.
3. Vulnerable children
Many children continued to be ‘at risk’ of special educational needs at the end of Key Stage 1
(2.3% of the EPPE sample had full statements), with more of the ‘home’ children falling into this
group even after taking into account background factors. Multiple disadvantage continued to
have an effect.
4. Effective settings
The individual pre-school a child attended shaped their developmental profiles at school entry
and also at age 7. These unique pre-school centre effects continued to influence children’s
cognitive and social/behavioural development throughout Key Stage 1. Of course this does not
mean that primary school has no impact on children’s lives - only that the individual pre-schools
they attended continued to have an influence. Indeed, the Key Stage 1 findings are already
pointing to important variations in primary school effects and these are a main focus of the
continuation EPPE 3-11 study up to end of Key Stage 2.
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