This report presents the results of a range of analyses related to the primary school phase of the
research. The focus has been on analysing children’s cognitive attainments in Year 5. A report
on children’s social/behavioural development at this age will be published separately, but early
results are included in a report to the Equalities Review (Effective Pre-school and Primary
Education 3-11 [EPPE 3-11] Team, 2007).
EPPE 3-11 involved the collection and analysis of a wide range of quantitative data about
children’s development, child, family and HLE characteristics and the characteristics of the pre-
schools attended. Additional value added measures of primary school academic effectiveness
have been derived from independent statistical analyses of National assessment sets conducted
for all primary schools in England (Melhuish et al., 2006), as part of the study. These have been
incorporated into the EPPE 3-11 database to provide indicators of the academic effectiveness of
primary schools attended; to complement the measures on the pre-school settings collected in
the original pre-school phase of the study. Thus, it is possible to explore both the separate and
joint pre-school and primary school influences on children’s outcomes in Year 5.
The Influence of Child Factors, Family Factors and HLE
The research collected detailed information on background characteristics through an interview
with parents at entry to the study. Additional information was obtained through a questionnaire
survey in Key Stage 1 (KS1). From this a rich database was created providing a range of
measures of potentially important child, family and HLE characteristics, including details of the
home learning environment. This has allowed the research to focus on the topic of educational
equity, identifying average differences in attainment for different sub-groups of pupils in Year 5.
By studying the extent of differences in patterns of development between Year 1 and Year 5 it
was possible to identify those groups of children for whom the attainment gap in Reading and
Mathematics has widened or reduced during Key Stage 2 and the factors most strongly
associated with better or poorer progress.
Our statistical analyses investigated the influence of different child, family and HLE background
factors on children’s attainments at the end of Year 5. These contextualised analyses identify
the unique (net) contribution of particular characteristics to variation in children’s outcomes, while
other background influences are controlled. For example, the impact of family SES is
established while taking into account the influence of mother’s qualification levels, low income,
ethnicity, birth weight, HLE etc. This is important, because our research shows that much of the
apparent difference in attainment associated with certain characteristics, for example, ethnic
group membership, is attributable to other socio-economic and demographic factors (e.g. birth
weight, income, language, family SES, parents’ qualification levels and HLE).
Similar analyses were undertaken on cognitive outcomes assessed at the end of Year 1 in
primary school. The impact of different child, family and HLE characteristics on attainment in
Year 1 was compared to their impact on attainment at the end of Year 5. These analyses sought
to establish the extent of change in the impact (strength and significance) of individual
background factors while young children move through primary school.
The findings draw particular attention to the importance of the quality of the early years home
learning environment (HLE) on children’s longer term educational outcomes.
In addition to HLE, strong effects remain for parents’ qualification levels especially that of the
mother, low birth weight, need for EAL support and family SES are also important predictors and
have a negative relationship to attainment.
Educational Influences
In addition to investigating background influences, EPPE 3-11 also explored the combined
impact of pre-school experience and the influence of the academic effectiveness of the primary
school. The aim of these analyses was to investigate questions such as whether children who
did not go to pre-school or who had attended a less effective pre-school benefited more if they
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