Educational Influences
In addition to investigating child, family and HLE background influences, EPPE 3-11
explored the combined net effects of pre-school experience and the academic
effectiveness of the primary school (measured using value added analyses of national
datasets). These analyses investigated whether children who did not go to pre-school or
who attended a less effective pre-school benefited more if they went on to attend a more
academically effective primary school. Another hypothesis tested was that high quality
or high effective pre-school experience would have a protective effect on children’s later
educational outcomes if they went on to less effective primary schools (see Section 3).
Additional value added analyses investigated pupils’ academic progress from the end of
Year 1 to the end of Year 5 of primary school. The assessments at the end of Year 1
provided the baseline measures for exploring relative gains in Reading and Mathematics
over time. In addition to the simple value added model that controls only for prior
attainments, contextualised models were developed to investigate which child, family and
HLE background factors and which pre- and primary school characteristics predict
progress in Reading and Mathematics (see Section 4).
The importance of educational experiences in shaping outcomes at age 10 years has
been highlighted by the Year 5 analyses (Sections 3 and 4). Pre-school influences
remain evident even after five years full time in primary school. However, attending any
pre-school is not sufficient to ensure better outcomes in the longer term. Both the quality
and the effectiveness of the pre-school setting predict cognitive outcomes. Poor quality
pre-school by itself does not improve later attainment outcomes at the end of Year 5 in
primary school, whereas medium and especially high quality pre-school experience is
associated with longer term benefits for the development of academic skills in Reading
and Mathematics. The results indicate that pre-school influences are somewhat stronger
for Mathematics than for Reading.
EPPE 3-11 is the first large scale longitudinal study to investigate both pre-school and
primary school influences on the same children’s attainment and progress. Results
demonstrate that the academic effectiveness (value added) of the primary school
attended has an additional positive influence on children’s attainment at the end of Year
5. It should be noted that the academic effectiveness measures were independently
derived from National assessment data and based on previous cohorts of children in the
schools. Thus, they provide robust measures of the academic quality of the primary
schools attended by EPPE 3-11 children.
In addition, the research is unique in having investigated for the first time the combined
influence of pre-school and primary school effects. For ‘home’ children in particular, the
effectiveness of the primary school attended helps to close the attainment gap (for those
who attend a high effective primary school there is a particular boost to Mathematics
outcomes in comparison with those who attended a low effectiveness primary school).
By contrast, attending a high quality or more effective pre-school seems to act as an
important protective factor for children who went on to attend a less effective primary
school.
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