Results suggest that children, whose parents’ highest SES is professional non-manual, continue
to have significantly higher attainment levels, net of the influence of income and qualifications,
though overall it is clear that mothers’ qualification level is relatively more important than either
income or SES in terms of predicting differences in children’s cognitive outcomes in Year 5.
Early Years Home Learning Environment (HLE) Measures
A number of measures provide an indication of aspects of HLE in the early years. These are
based on the frequency of specific activities involving the child, as reported by parents when
children were recruited to the study during the pre-school period (i.e. teaching the child the
alphabet, playing with letters and numbers, library visits, reading to the child, teaching the child
songs or nursery rhymes). These measures were combined to create an overall early years HLE
index with scores between 0 (very low HLE) to 45 (very high HLE).
When the overall HLE index was tested, it was found that the overall quality of the early years
HLE remains a powerful predictor of better cognitive attainment at Year 5. The effect size (ES)
for Mathematics between the highest and the lowest scoring groups on the early years HLE
index was 0.57 net of other child and family factors, while for Reading the ES was 0.61 (see
Figures 1.6 and 1.7). A high HLE rather than a low one has a similar positive effect on outcomes
at Year 5 as having a mother with a degree versus no qualification. It should be noted that there
are only modest correlations (r=0.32) between HLE and parents’ highest qualification levels.
This means that although there is a tendency for better qualified parents to provide a better HLE,
the link is relatively modest and some poorly qualified parents give a very good HLE while other
better qualified patents do not. In terms of the statistical model the early years HLE and parents’
qualification level work as two independent predictors indicating that some parents can provide
high quality HLE irrespective of their own qualification levels and support the cognitive
development of their children in this way.
Figure 1.6: The net effect of early years HLE on Reading attainment at the end of Year 5
The Net Effect of Early Years HLE: Reading
