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5. Different Pre-school effects for Different Groups of Children

Additional analyses were conducted to explore the question of whether attending a pre-school
centre and the quality characteristics of the pre-school centre have different effects for different
groups of children. The results are presented below and explore the differential impact of pre-
school experience by multiple disadvantage and the qualification level of the parents.

Multiple Disadvantage and the impact of pre-school experience

These results provide some support for the view that higher quality and more effective pre-
schools can provide a long term attainment boost for more disadvantaged groups of children as
well as for less disadvantaged children. The pattern and strength of benefit for less
disadvantaged children is more apparent in this group. This may be due to the larger numbers in
the analysis but may also indicate that more advantaged groups can gain greater advantages
from educational provision at different ages. For them, pre-school generally gives a long term
boost especially higher quality and more effective pre-school. For the more disadvantaged
children high quality or high effectiveness of the pre-school centre is absolutely essential to offer
long term benefit to cognitive outcomes. Importantly, low quality pre-school appears to offer
disadvantaged children no long term benefit on attainment in Year 5 when taking account of the
influence of other predictors. This is in contrast with earlier findings, at entry to primary school,
where all pre-school provision, even low quality provision, was associated with better outcomes.
This indicates that for lasting benefits higher quality experience is needed.

Parents’ qualification level and the impact of pre-school experience

For these additional analyses the sample was divided into two groups by the highest qualification
level of the parents. Low qualified parents in these analyses are defined as parents who have no
qualifications or whose highest qualification level is vocational at age 16 (25% of the sample). In
the other group at least one parent had at least one academic qualification at age 16 or above.
This group forms the majority of the sample (73%).

With regard to the effect of pre-school attendance, it appears that attending a pre-school makes
a certain difference for the attainment in Reading at the end of Year 5 for children of parents with
at least one academic qualification but not much difference for children of low qualified parents.
For Mathematics similar results are found though effect sizes are generally larger. Children of
parents with at least one academic qualification seem to gain more advantage from attending
any pre-school than children of low qualified parents.

But again, for children of low qualified parents, the quality of the pre-school is associated with the
long term effect for Mathematics attainment; compared to children who had low quality pre-
school experience, children of low qualified parents who went to medium quality pre-school are
doing slightly better (ES = 0.12), while the impact for children who went to high quality pre-school
is stronger (ES = 0.24). Children of parents with at least one academic qualification who stayed
at home are doing significantly worse in Mathematics than those who went to pre-school even
after 5 years of primary education.

The effectiveness of the pre-school also seems to have some influence on Reading outcomes for
children of low qualified parents. Compared to staying at home, these children tend to show
lower attainments in Reading if they went to a low effective pre-school centre, but they tend to do
better if they went to a medium effective or highly effective pre-school (the difference in ES
between those who went to a low rather than a medium effective pre-school is 0.24). Children of
parents with at least one academic qualification, had somewhat better Reading attainment at the
end of Year 5 if they went to highly effective pre-schools and slightly better attainment in Reading
if they attended a medium effective pre-school centre, compared to those children with similar
qualified parents who did not go to pre-school.

The findings for Mathematics are somewhat stronger and in line with the other findings. They
indicate that children of lower qualified parents benefit especially from attending highly effective
pre-school (ES = 0.29), but not particularly from medium and not at all from low effective pre-

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