The EPPE project collected additional data about family structure (number of parents and
number of children in a household). With information about parental employment and salary it
would be possible to calculate likely benefit income for those not working or on low salaries.
However, given the present findings that indicate a salary effect only at higher levels, and given
the availability of FSM data, such further analyses are not needed.
The results suggest that pre-school duration has an impact irrespective of parental salary levels.
Only fairly high joint salary bands show a significant net impact on attainment. Further investment
in pre-school may therefore be expected to have a positive impact on more young children than
the provision of additional income at modest levels.
IMPACT OF PRE-SCHOOL AND INCOME FOR LOW AND AVERAGE ATTAINMENT
GROUPS
Further analyses were conducted in response to requests to investigate the size of income
effects for low attaining groups of children in comparison with average attaining pupils.
To conduct these analyses children were divided into three groups (bottom 25%, middle 50%
and top 25%) based on their General Cognitive Ability (GCA). The GCA measure used was
collected at entry to the study (age 3 years plus) for the main pre-school sample, and at entry to
school for the ‘home’ group. Each group was further sub-divided into income bands. By including
these groups in the multilevel contextualised model, it is possible to establish what extra boost a
higher income can give to a low attaining child. The effect size can be compared to the size of
other factors including pre-school duration. It should be noted that in these comparisons net
effects are calculated controlling for the range of child family and home learning environment
measures found to be statistically significant in the main analyses.
Because children are divided into prior attainment groups, the contextualised models become a
crude form of surrogate value added model.
Table B9 below shows the results for the two measures of interest reported here.
Table B9 Comparison of Effect sizes for children with low and average GCA by parental
salary group and pre-school attendance
|
Salary Groups (Compared with low attainers no reported salary |
Pre-reading |
Language |
|
Low attainers £2500-£15000 ~ |
0.131 |
0.077 |
|
Low attainers £17500-£27500___________________ |
-0.013________________ |
-0.097__________ |
|
Low attainers £30000-£35000___________________ |
-0.091 |
-0.113__________ |
|
Low attainers £37500 Plus18 |
0.298# |
-0.062__________ |
|
Average attainers no salary_______________________ |
0.575*________________ |
0.857*__________ |
|
Average attainers £2500-£15000_________________ |
0.402*________________ |
0.724*__________ |
|
Average attainers £17500-£27500_______________ |
0.596*________________ |
0.828*__________ |
|
Average attainers £ 3000-£35000_________________ |
0.493*________________ |
0.787*__________ |
|
Average attainers £37500-£66000_______________ |
0.737*________________ |
0.751*__________ |
|
Average attainers £67500 -£132000______________ |
0.861*________________ |
0.756___________ |
|
Duration of pre-school (compared with no pre- | ||
|
Under 1 year____________________________________ |
0.156 |
0.514* |
18 Due to relatively small numbers, the three highest salary groups were combined for the low attainers.
77