Section 2: Changes in the Impact of Background Factors on Children’s
Cognitive Attainments in Year 5 Compared to Year 1
In this section we compare the net impact of child, family factors and early years HLE on
cognitive outcomes at Year 1 with findings of their impact at Year 5. The change of net impact of
different influencing factors (measured by effect sizes) reveals whether certain groups of children
that showed lower attainment in Year 1 have fallen further behind or begun to catch up by the
end of Year 5 (controlling for any other influences). It also explores the question of whether
certain groups of children have further improved compared to the level of improvement made by
other groups on average6 in terms of their cognitive attainments during Key Stage 2.
Child Measures
Girls show higher attainment in Reading than boys in both Year 1 and 5. For Mathematics the
effect has reversed between Year 1 and Year 5; where girls showed slightly higher attainment
than boys at Year 1, at Year 5 boys have not only caught up but have overtaken the girls.
In both years children with very low birth weight showed lower cognitive outcomes than children
who had normal birth weight, but the effect has decreased for both Reading and Mathematics by
Year 5.
The family size has also lost some of its impact on attainment in Reading. For children who
experienced early developmental problems, this factor has increased in its impact on attainment
in Reading but slightly decreased in its impact on attainment in Mathematics.
By the end of Year 5 the effect of ‘needing EAL support’ has decreased for Reading. Children
who need EAL support are still showing significantly lower attainment in Reading but the gap
compared to those children who do not need EAL support has become smaller.
For ethnic groups we found that Black African children had slightly higher attainment in Reading
than White UK children at the end of Year 1. However, by the end of Year 5, they have fallen
behind. The same is found for children who are categorised as ‘any Other ethnic minority’.
Other ethnic groups have, compared to White UK children, stayed at the same level in Reading.
For Mathematics a marked change in level of attainment is found for Indian children. In Year 1
they had relatively lower scores than White UK children; at Year 5 they had significantly higher
scores. Black African children have fallen further behind in Mathematics, whereas Pakistani and
Bangladeshi children have improved their attainment relative to White UK children during KS2.
However, given the relatively small sizes of some ethnic groups in the sample these results
should be interpreted with caution. Nonetheless they suggest that changes in the relative
strength of differences between pupil sub-groups are worth further exploration. It is also
important that the potentially confounding influence of demographic factors is recognised in
interpreting any ‘raw’ differences in average attainment levels (hence net effect sizes - as used
here - are preferable for this reason).
Family Measures
The highest qualification level of the mother was a strong predictor of children’s cognitive
outcomes at Year 5 and at earlier time points. The change of impact between Year 1 and Year
5, illustrates that the influence of mother’s qualification has become even stronger especially for
Reading. For both years the comparison group was ‘mothers with no qualification’. Interestingly,
although relatively less important than mother’s qualification level, the influence of the highest
qualification level of the father has become stronger for outcomes in Mathematics.
6 Note that attainment was measured by test scores which were age-standardised and normalised within
the sample. Therefore the score of an individual child always represents his or her attainment relative to
the sample.
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