A longitudinal study of early childhood education and subsequent academic achievement

Abstract

Abstract The relationships between duration of attendance at early childhood education facilities and measures of intelligence, reading comprehension, mathematical reasoning, and school ability up to the age of 13 years were studied in a birth cohort of New Zealand children. Before adjustment for confounding factors, children who had attended early education facilities for more than two years scored from .33 to .80 SDs higher on tests of cognitive ability and school achievement than children who did not attend early education. However, after adjustment for confounding factors, including parental education levels, socioeconomic status, family size, child ethnicity, infant feeding methods, early mother-child interaction, and the child's birthweight, these differences reduced to between .13 and .47 SDs. Nonetheless, in all but one case, significant associations were found between duration of attendance at early childhood education and cognitive ability and school achievement after controlling for confounding...