The name is absent

These results support the view that for longer term benefit only medium and high quality pre-
school centres show higher sustained benefits on attainment at Year 5, but also indicate that the
benefits of the pre-school experience appear to be moderated by the quality of early years HLE
experienced by children.

Early Years HLE and Pre-school Effectiveness

We also investigated the joint effects of early years HLE and pre-school centre effectiveness
(derived from earlier value added analyses on the progress the EPPE sample children made in
the individual pre-school centres). The results show the strongest and most consistent pattern
for Mathematics and are illustrated in Figure 3.5. Children who had a low early years HLE obtain
most advantage out of attending pre-schools that were highly effective in promoting Early
number concepts (ES = 0.32 for highly effective pre-schools). For the group of children with
medium early years HLE it seems that a moderate or high effective pre-school does not make
much difference compared with staying at home, but children who went to a low quality pre-
school have similar attainments as children who did not go to pre-school and had low HLE. The
children who show the best effects on later attainment are those children who have high early
years HLE and go to highly effective pre-schools and this benefit is large. These children not
only gain a lot from the high quality of their early years HLE, but also get an additional boost from
attending a more effective pre-school. These findings are in broad accord with those on quality
reported earlier in this section.

Figure 3.5: The combined impact of early years HLE and effectiveness of pre-school on attainment
in Mathematics at Year 5

The Combined Impact of Early Years HLE and Pre -School

Effectiveness ( Early Numbers ) on Attainment in Mathematics

in Year 5

□ no pre-school

□ ow effectve

□ medum effective

□ hghy effectve

Pre-School

Effectiveness

Reference Group: Low
HLE and No Pre -School

Results for Reading are not as clear but still a fascinating joint effect was found: children with low
early years HLE do not show a substantial long-term benefit from just attending any pre-school
rather than staying at home. However, although children with low early years HLE do not show a
substantial long term benefit from attending a low or medium effective pre-school, they do get a
fairly strong positive effect from attending a highly effective pre-school. In addition, children with
medium early years HLE show a long lasting modest effect from attending a medium or highly
effective pre-school. As might be expected, high HLE children showed a fairly strong positive
effect whether or not they attended a pre-school (ES 0.36), but those who went to highly effective
pre-school show the most positive longer term effect on Reading attainment in Year 5 (ES 0.54).

18

<<   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   >>

More intriguing information