Author Dr Sebastian Suggate from the University of Otago in New Zealand said he decided to carry out the research because, apart from a small study from 1974, he was unable to find any research to back up the widely held view that children should learn to read from the age of five.
He said his findings showed that this view was 'contestable'.
The study will lend force to the argument of many early years experts that children are being pushed into formal schooling too early with no real benefit.
This month the DCSF is sending out Government guidance to all nurseries and childminders advising them on how to encourage three-and four-year-old boys to write (News, 7 January).
Dr Suggate's three-year research involved 400 New Zealand children and included a study that compared the abilities of children from Rudolf Steiner schools, who do not start learning to read until they are seven, with children from state-run primary schools.
It found that by the age of 11 there was no difference between children who started to read at age five and those at the Steiner schools who started reading later.
The research also found that by eight or nine, the lower performing readers had caught up with the earlier higher performing readers.
Dr Suggate stressed the importance of early language development, which he said was 'in many cases' a better predictor of children's later reading abilities than early reading.
'Because later starters at reading are still learning through play, language and interactions with adults, their long-term learning is not disadvantaged,' he said. 'Instead, the activities prepare the soil well for later development of reading.'
He added that if there were not 'any advantages to learning to read from the age of five, could there be disadvantages to starting teaching children to read earlier? In other words, we could be putting them off.'
All the Steiner schools involved in the study were state-funded and children were from varied socio-economic backgrounds.
Dr Suggate said that children in the most disadvantaged groups caught up at the same time as the other children.
'There's the argument that by getting the ball rolling earlier with reading, the ball will roll faster.' But he said his study found that this was not the case with reading.
He said he was now extending the project into the development of children's social, language and creative skills, by comparing children from Steiner schools in New Zealand and Germany with children in state-run schools.
