Research and policy
Policy: Early education and children's outcomes - how long do the impacts last? A study of a cohort of children born in 1958.
1 Jul 2005
The authors consider the returns of two different early education “treatments”. First they consider the impact of a child obtaining any early education prior to the age of five, whether this takes place in a school setting (through early entry to primary school), or in a pre-school setting such as state-maintained or private nursery, or playgroup. This answers the question of whether any formal human capital intervention before the age of five is beneficial for child outcomes. Second they restrict their treatment of interest to attendance at pre-school only, answering the question of whether attendance at nursery or other establishments before entering primary school has short or long-term effects.
A range of outcomes is considered relating to cognitive development, socialisation, and educational attainment and labour market outcomes up to the age of 42.
Findings
The findings suggest that investments in human capital before the age of five appear to have had long-lasting and positive effects on the children from the 1958 cohort. The authors found that early education leads to improvements in cognitive tests, including both maths and reading at age seven. These effects diminish in size but remain significant throughout the schooling years, up to age 16. The effects on socialisation appear to be more mixed. The authors find some evidence of improvement in teacher reports, but a deterioration in parental reports of social skills at age seven, especially for first born children. However, such effects on social skills (both negative and positive) do not tend to last and are no longer detectable by age 11. They also find evidence that there are small gains from early education in adulthood, both on educational attainment and labour market performance, through a higher probability of obtaining qualifications, and in turn marginally higher employment probabilities and wages at age 33.
Size of the estimated effects
The report shows that the gains to early cognition (age seven) are of a comparable size to those associated with growing up in a family where the father is of high social class, and almost completely counteract the negative effects on test scores of growing up in a difficult family environment. Whilst these latter family background effects either stay the same or grow bigger throughout childhood and adulthood, the effects of early education diminish, and so are small relative to the impact of these family background factors by the time the individual enters adulthood.
The research shows there is a positive impact of attending nursery before a young person attends primary school on early test scores. Once they control for background characteristics, the authors find that these effects do not tend to be long-lasting, with very weak evidence of continued effects through to age 16. They also fail to find effects, either positive or negative, on social skills. However, they do find evidence of effects on wages at age 33 which are of a similar magnitude to the wage effects found associated with pre-compulsory schooling more generally.
Conclusion
The authors say they cannot determine how representative of current provision the pre-school experience of the NCDS children was. However, if anything, the presumption is that any intervening changes in the practice, curriculum and organisation of pre-school institutions would have worked towards increasing the quality of the educational experience provided. Thus the long-term benefits uncovered for the 1958 cohort are plausibly going to be even larger for current pre-school children.
A full copy of the report can be downloaded from www.dcsf.gov.uk/research.
(From Parental background and child outcomes: How much does money matter and what else matters? by Laura Blow, Alissa Goodman, Ian Walker, and Frank Windmeijer, published by DfES, July 2005)
