good early years HLE also show better progress (ES = 0.23 compared to those with low early
years HLE), but the association is not as strong for Reading. Children’s engagement in home
computing activities (as reported by parents during Key Stage 1) also appear to support progress
in Mathematics between Year 1 and Year 5 (ES = 0.14 and 0.18) for high and very high scores
on the Home-computing factor and was associated with a gender difference, boys being more
likely than girls to be reported as using computers at home (for further details see Sammons et
al., 2007).
In addition, we sought to establish whether any characteristics of pre- or primary school
experience were not only predictors of academic attainment in Year 5 but also of relative
academic progress between Year 1 and Year 5. We found no evidence that just attending a pre-
school or not (irrespective of the quality or the effectiveness of the pre-school centre) was
associated with better progress in Reading or Mathematics during primary school.
However, there were some indications that children who went to highly effective pre-schools in
terms of promoting Pre-reading, subsequently made better progress (between Year 1 and Year
5) in Reading in primary school than children who did not go to pre-school at all; although this
just fails to reach statistical significance with this sample (ES= 0.20, p = 0.06). In addition, we
found that children who went to highly effective pre-schools in terms of developing Pre-reading,
later made significantly better progress in Reading in primary school compared to those who
went to very low effective pre-schools (ES = 0.29).
In contrast to the Reading results, for Mathematics none of the pre-school indicators were found
to be a significant predictor of better progress over the primary school period. Taken together it
appears that the benefits of pre-school centre experience for Mathematics attainment seem to
operate mainly by providing young children with a better start to primary school. Although this
benefit is still evident for attainment in Year 5 it does not lead to increased academic progress
once they start primary school. This is in line with earlier results reported in Sammons (2004a;
2004b).
We also investigated the influence of primary school academic effectiveness for the progress of
the EPPE 3-11 children. These measures have already been shown to be highly significant
predictors of children’s cognitive attainment outcomes at Year 5. Our findings show that the
effectiveness of the primary school also has a significant influence on children’s progress in the
direction predicted (i.e. positive effects for more academically effective primary schools) and that
effects are stronger for Mathematics than for Reading for those attending schools of medium
effectiveness. The ES on progress for those in a high compared to a low academically effective
primary school was 0.29 for Mathematics, while for Reading it was similar at 0.26. This is
somewhat larger than the net effect for SES on progress for comparison.
The findings here have implications for those concerned to reduce the equity gap in achievement
because they indicate which sub-groups of children are most at risk of making poor progress
during their time in primary school. Once again the highlight the relevance of the academic
effectiveness of the individual primary school a child attends in promoting better progress during
Key Stage 2.
Summary and Conclusions
EPPE 3-11 is a 10 year longitudinal research study. The overall objective of the study is to
investigate the factors that influence young children’s educational outcomes during pre-school
and on into primary school. An educational effectiveness research design was adopted to
investigate the influence of a range of child, family and home learning environment (HLE)
influences and to identify the nature and extent of any pre-school and primary school influences
on such outcomes at different ages (Sammons et al 2005., Siraj-Blatchford et al., 2006).
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