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Section 4: Exploring Children’s Reading and Mathematics Progress
between Year 1 and Year 5

Pupils’ progress from Year 1 to Year 5 at primary school was investigated. The standardised
NFER Reading and Mathematics assessments taken in Year 1 provide the baseline measures
for these analyses of pupil progress over four school years (Year 1 to Year 5). The models allow
for the multilevel structure of the data set by including the primary school attended at level 2.
This is important in value added analyses of pupil progress commonly used in school
effectiveness studies. We found that around eighteen per cent of the variation in pupils’ progress
between Year 1 and Year 5 in our model is accounted for by the primary school attended. These
findings are in line with other reported studies of primary school effects (see Mortimore et al.,
1988; MacBeath & Mortimore, 2001).

Our analysis strategy is shown in Figure 5.1.

Figure 5.1: Strategy of statistical analysis exploring pupils progress in cognitive outcomes

We found that children who have highly qualified mothers (ES = 0.62 for mothers with a degree
compared to no qualification) and who had a good HLE in their early years (ES = 0.47 for highest
HLE category compared to lowest HLE category), made significantly better progress in Reading
between Year 1 and Year 5. On the other hand children whose parents reported two or more
developmental problems (ES =0.44 compared to no developmental problems), children who
grow up in low SES families (ES = 0.34 for ‘professional non-manual’ compared to ‘unskilled-
manual’) and children who were eligible for free school meals (ES = 0.23) made significantly less
progress between their first and their fifth year of primary school education.

For Mathematics the results show that boys (ES = 0.17 compared to girls), Indian children (ES
=0.68 compared to white UK) and children of more highly qualified mothers (ES = 0.41 for
mothers with a degree compared to no qualification) and fathers (ES = 0.25 for fathers with a
degree compared to no qualification) make greater gains in terms of progress over this period of
primary school education. Low SES is moderately related to relatively less progress (ES = 0.25
for ‘professional non-manual’ compared to ‘skilled manual’). Interestingly children who still need
EAL support in Year 5 (ES =0.38) made significantly less progress in Mathematics. This result
supports the conclusion that adequate language skills are not only important for gains in
language related subjects but also for progress in Mathematics. Again, children who had a very

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