Early Learning and Child Well‑being in England

Chapter 6. Summary and conclusions

Abstract

This chapter summarises the main findings for England and discusses them in relation to themes such as socio-economic status, the home learning environment and early childhood education and care.

The promise of early learning

A child’s physical and behavioural systems develop sequentially and cumulatively. What happens early in life sets the foundations for future development. During the first few years of life, children learn at a faster rate than at any other time. They develop the basic literacy, numeracy, self-regulation and social-emotional skills that will guide their future personal and professional achievements (Becker, 2011_[1]; Sylva et al., 2010_[2]). These skills also form the foundation of general well-being, including how children will cope with successes and setbacks as adults.

The quality and extent of development during the early years depends on the type of environments provided by a child’s family, early childhood education and care (ECEC) systems and the wider community. Children are not born with a fixed skill set; the environment to which they are exposed influences how their skills develop, as well as their capacity to learn new skills (Kovas, et al., 2007_[3]).

Children’s emergent skills can be developed through practice and reinforcement. They can be strengthened and supported through the contexts in which they spend their time. Quality early learning experiences allow children to explore their own interests and capabilities. Developmentally-appropriate activities based on play and interactions with adults and other children allow children to discover and explore their surroundings as active participants in their own learning.

The International Early Learning and Child Well-being Study (IELS) provides robust new evidence that contributes to understanding children’s early learning outcomes and overall development. It provides countries with comparative benchmark data on children’s early learning and a framework to foster the growing interest in and commitment to early childhood. It helps countries identify factors that promote or hinder children’s learning outcomes. It provides information on the relationship between children’s early education experiences, home learning environment and individual characteristics, and their learning outcomes. The study also contributes to understanding how children’s emerging literacy, numeracy, self-regulation and social-emotional skills are related.

Summary of IELS results in England

Children in England have relatively strong numeracy, literacy, mental flexibility and working memory outcomes

Five-year-old children in England had the strongest emergent numeracy skills among countries participating in IELS, with outcomes significantly higher than the IELS mean of 500 points. England had the largest percentage of children at the highest level of numeracy skills, and the smallest percentage at the lowest level.

Outcomes for emergent literacy, mental flexibility and working memory were also relatively high. The average emergent literacy, mental flexibility and working memory scores of five-year-old children in England were significantly higher than those of children in the United States, and similar to those of children in Estonia.

There is room for improvement in the inhibition and social-emotional outcomes of children in England

Five-year-olds in England were less able to successfully inhibit their automatic responses when presented with a new set of information than children in Estonia or the United States. Inhibition skills are predictive of a child’s future well-being, including how well they do at school and in non-academic activities where inhibition and self-control correlate with success. While inhibition outcomes were lowest in England, outcomes in the remaining self-regulation assessments were similar to or slightly higher than the other participating countries. Children in England were more likely than those in the United States, and as likely as those in Estonia, to successfully switch between rules and recall short visual sequences.

Children in England were less likely to exhibit prosocial behaviours and less likely to successfully identify the emotions of characters in stories than children in Estonia, and as likely as those in the United States. Social-emotional learning has implications on children’s ability to develop prosocial and other positive social-emotional behaviours, which predict success across a range of factors later in life. Children in England were reported by educators as being less disruptive than children in Estonia, but as disruptive as children in the United States.

A focus on self-regulation and social-emotional skills during the early years may benefit children’s emergent literacy and numeracy skills

Improving a child’s self-regulation and social-emotional skills also benefits their emergent literacy and numeracy skills. On a practical level, a child’s ability to acquire traditional cognitive skills partly depends on their ability to focus attention, work with information, engage in prosocial activities, and learn through listening and watching. To this end, social-emotional and self-regulation skills are positively related to the development of a child’s emergent literacy and numeracy skills. The highly interrelated nature of these skills makes it difficult to separate the importance of any one aspect in the overall development and well-being of a child. Children depend on a combination of all these skills to help them as they learn to express themselves, understand new information, take part in group activities and sustain play with other children.

The socio-economic status of a child’s household is strongly associated with their early learning outcomes

The combination of household income, parental occupation and parental educational completion – that together create the socio-economic index applied in IELS – predicted the development of a child’s emergent literacy and numeracy, self-regulation and social-emotional skills. The children of parents with higher levels of education had higher outcomes on these assessments.

The relationship between the socio-economic status of a child’s household and the development of emergent literacy and numeracy skills was stronger in England than in Estonia, despite the fact that the two countries have similar levels of income inequality (Gini coefficients1 of 0.34 and 0.35, respectively) and universal entitlement to ECEC. The socio-economic status of a child’s household was as strongly related to their emergent literacy skills in England and the United States (which has higher income inequality, with a Gini coefficient of 0.42), although the correlation with emergent numeracy was weaker in England than in the United States.

A mother’s highest completed education level was also a significant predictor of her children’s early learning outcomes. About 40 % of children sampled in England had mothers who had completed at least a bachelor’s degree. These children had significantly higher mean emergent literacy, numeracy and self-regulation outcomes than the children of mothers who had completed a lower level of formal education, even after accounting for household income.

A child’s home learning environment predicts their overall early learning outcomes

Children’s home learning environments, which includes activities and interactions both in and outside the home, offer a range of learning opportunities, such as reading together, playing with numbers or shapes, or having back-and-forth conversations. Activities that a child engaged in with their parents, the relationship between a parent and the child, and the home learning resources a child had access to were all related to early learning outcomes. Children provided with a range of different learning opportunities learn to learn for themselves.

A child’s home learning environment was related to their early learning outcomes. For example, the number of children’s books that a child had access to in their home was a significant predictor of their emergent literacy and numeracy outcomes, as well as their working memory, emotion identification and prosocial outcomes, after accounting for socio-economic status. Similarly, the frequency with which a child was taken to a special or paid activity outside of the home was related to most of their self-regulation and all of their social-emotional outcomes, after accounting for socio-economic status. The children of parents perceived by educators as being moderately or strongly involved in activities taking place at the school also had higher emergent literacy and numeracy, mental flexibility and social-emotional outcomes.

References

[1] Becker, B. (2011), “Social disparities in children’s vocabulary in early childhood. Does pre-school education help to close the gap? 1”, The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 62/1, pp. 69-88, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2010.01345.x.

[3] Kovas, Y. et al. (2007), “The genetic and environmental origins of learning abilities and disabilities in the early school years”, Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, Vol. 72/3, pp. vii-144, http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5834.2007.00439.x.

[2] Sylva, K. et al. (2010), Early childhood matters: evidence from the effective pre-school and primary education project, Routledge, London, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203862063.

Note

← 1. The Gini coefficient is a measure of income or wealth distribution, where 1 corresponds to maximal inequality and 0 represents perfect equality.