Nursery World - PEEP children do benefit, says study

Young children whose parents are involved in their learning make 'significantly more progress' than those whose parents aren't, an evaluation report of the Oxfordshire PEEP project has found. The report, The Effects of the Peers Early Education Partnership (PEEP) on Children's Developmental Progress, by Dr Maria Evangelou and Professor Kathy Sylva of the Department of Educational Studies at Oxford University, looked at the initiative, which was set up in 1995 in three deprived estates in south-east Oxford, but is now expanding throughout Britain. They focused on whether the children whose parents participated in the PEEP programme made greater developmental progress than children whose parents have not participated in it.

The report, The Effects of the Peers Early Education Partnership (PEEP) on Children's Developmental Progress, by Dr Maria Evangelou and Professor Kathy Sylva of the Department of Educational Studies at Oxford University, looked at the initiative, which was set up in 1995 in three deprived estates in south-east Oxford, but is now expanding throughout Britain. They focused on whether the children whose parents participated in the PEEP programme made greater developmental progress than children whose parents have not participated in it.

Dr Evangelou and Professor Sylva noted how the PEEP programme has a structured curriculum for each age group that is based on specific curricular areas such as listening, talking, numeracy and self-esteem, and that each week the curriculum for parents includes specific books, rhymes, songs and activities. They found that three- to five-year-old children showed gains in vocabulary, language comprehension, understanding about books, and number concepts, as well as having higher self-esteem than comparable children whose parents did not take part in the project.

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