While the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) project now conclusively demonstrates that children who enjoy access to nursery education achieve better results at school by the age of seven, it also highlights that the quality of provision is key.
There is a wealth of information relating to quality contained in the EPPE report, and some of it may surprise practitioners. As Professor Kathy Sylva, head of the research team, points out, 'They may be surprised to know that "best practice" included many examples of teacher-planned play which had clear objectives for the learning of intellectual skills.
Children in settings where they made the most all-round progress engaged in fully chosen play about half the time and in teacher-planned or led activities for the rest of it.'
She adds, 'Another surprising finding might be the fact that engaging in activities which support children's learning at home, such as reading to a child and singing, was more beneficial to a child's development than having parents with higher category jobs or qualifications.'
These kinds of findings are set to impact on the sector at the very highest levels. The study has already been used to inform the Treasury's 2001 and 2004 spending reviews, and most recently EPPE has contributed to the Ten-Year Childcare Strategy.
Speaking on behalf of the team, research co-ordinator Brenda Taggart says, 'The study is having an effect at three levels. We have affected national policy through our work with the Sure Start Unit, and at local authority level we are working with a number of LEAs who are reconfiguring their services. We are also working with practitioner groups to consider what this means for day-to-day work with children.'
Ms Taggart reports that the study was designed not only to answer national policy questions but to address the effectiveness of pre-school education and have messages for practitioners about how they can improve their practice. 'It was challenging because it was the first time an educational "effectiveness" or "value added" research design had ever been applied to pre-schooling,' she says.
Keeping up to date
Professor Sylva corroborates that among the many challenges was the need to keep up to date with policy during the study period and maintain links with children and families through newsletters, media events and school support networks. Disseminating practical findings across the sector is also a huge task in itself.
These practical findings are many and diverse, reflecting the scale of the project. Carried out by researchers from the Institute of Education and Birkbeck College, University of London, and the University of Oxford, the project began in 1997 with the principal aim of measuring the impact of pre-school on young children's intellectual and social/behavioural development. Key questions included, 'Can the pre-school experience reduce social inequalities and are some schools more effective than others in promoting children's development?'
The EPPE team collected a wide range of information on more than 3,000 children, their parents, their home environments and the pre-school settings they attended. A total of 141 settings were drawn from a range of providers, including local authority day nurseries, integrated centres, playgroups, private day nurseries, maintained nursery schools and maintained nursery classes. A sample of 'home' children, who had no or minimal school experience, was recruited to the study at entry to school for comparison with the pre-school group.
In addition to investigating the effects of pre-school provision on young children's development, EPPE explored the characteristics of effective practice, and the pedagogy that underpins them, through 12 intensive case studies of settings with positive child outcomes.
EPPE's evidence highlights that pre-school attendance improves children's cognitive development and aspects of social behaviour, such as independence, concentration, co-operation and relationships with other children.
The study underlined that even after taking account of a child's background and existing intellectual skills, the type of pre-school attended is significant. It was found that integrated centres - those which fully combine education with care - have a particularly important effect on development.
While good quality pre-school education can be found in all kinds of settings irrespective of type of provider, EPPE data revealed that integrated centres and nursery school provision have the highest scores in pre-school quality. Meanwhile playgroups, private day nurseries and local authority centres have lower scores.
Professor Sylva emphasises that integrated settings produced the best results because they were led by professionals. 'The difference between settings in the EPPE study integrating care and education, and the new children's centres, is the higher proportion of trained teachers in the EPPE integrated settings.'
Shaping policy
According to Brenda Taggart, the case studies identify interesting factors which assist effective outcomes. 'These include sustained shared thinking, purposeful group work and the knowledge of the practitioner of how children learn,' she says. 'Anyone who is interested in effective pedagogy could look at the findings and use these to consider their own practice.'
With the DfES committed to funding the research for another five years, EPPE promises to play a major role in shaping childcare policy. Ms Taggart thinks the work is invaluable. 'There is much that confirms the findings from other research projects, which is very reassuring in terms of our analyses, but there is also much that is new. The results are illuminating at a policy and research level because they have been able to provide a statistical breakdown of the effect of different characteristics on children's progress.'
But in the final analysis, do the findings suggest that the Government's current approach to integrated childcare is the right one?
Ms Taggart says, 'Certainly in the EPPE project, the integrated setting and nursery schools produced the best overall outcomes for children, and this would suggest the Government's policy for children's centres, which combine care with education, is a step in the right direction. However, a note of caution should be sounded here. Our integrated settings had a high proportion of qualified teachers. If the new children's centres dilute the overall contribution of qualified practitioners, then they are unlikely to replicate the EPPE findings.'
Further information
* The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) project http:// k1.ioe.ac.uk/schools/ecpe/eppe/index/htm
* The High/Scope Perry Pre-school programme www.high-scope.org.uk
