Significant learning gaps between disadvantaged and advantaged five-year-olds are evident in both their cognitive and social-emotional skill development.1 Children from low SES families face, on average, an 8-20 month learning gap behind more advantaged children (Figure 1.1). Most pronounced is the learning gap in social-emotional skills. These skills enable children to operate well in groups, get along with other children, regulate their emotional responses and sustain attention. Social-emotional skills are key in enabling children to adjust to and succeed in a school environment ( (Hammer, Melhuish and Howard, 2018[1]); (Schoon et al., 2015[2])).
Improving Early Equity
From Evidence to Action
In emergent literacy a learning gap of 12 months exists between disadvantaged and advantaged five-year-olds.
The learning gaps disadvantaged children face in critical cognitive skills are also significant. Emergent literacy2 is one of the best predictors of later student achievement ( (Duncan et al., 2007[3])Yet at five years-of-age, there is a learning gap of 12 months between disadvantaged and advantaged children. This learning gap represents a year of development that disadvantaged children will need to close quickly if they are to have a chance of doing as well in school as advantaged children. Most disadvantaged children will not achieve the accelerated rate of development necessary to do so ( (Sammons et al., 2015[4]) (Heckman, 2011[5])).
Source: (OECD, 2020[6]) Early Learning and Child Well-being: A Study of Five-year-Olds in England, Estonia, and the United States, https://doi.org/10.1787/3990407f-en.
As children get older, inequities generally become more intractable ( (Stiles and Jernigan, 2010[7])). Thus, achieving a level playing field between disadvantaged and advantaged children requires education leaders and policy makers to adjust their systems to the needs of disadvantaged children before they arrive at school, as well as in the first years of schooling to cater to the needs of disadvantaged children.
The magnitude of learning gaps between disadvantaged and advantaged five-year-olds and between disadvantaged and advantaged 15-year-old students in the same countries are strikingly similar (Figure 1.2).
Source: (OECD, 2018[8]); OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) database, https://www.oecd.org/pisa/data/2018database/; (accessed on 12 July 2022). (OECD, 2020[9]), OECD International Early Leaning Survey 2018 database https://www.oecd.org/education/school/early-learning-and-child-well-being-study/early-learning-and-child-well-being-3990407f-en.htm (accessed on 6 June 2022)
StatLink 2 https://stat.link/xo8ci6
The comparison of IELS and PISA cohorts raises questions on whether education systems are continuing existing early inequities rather than reducing them.
The five-year-olds in IELS 2018 are not the same students as those in PISA 2018, although they are from the same countries. Nonetheless, the above comparison of IELS and PISA cohorts raises questions on whether these education systems are simply continuing existing early inequities rather than reducing these. In future years, countries participating in IELS will have access to PISA data on the same cohort of students. This will reliably show the impact of schooling on a country’s overall education performance, as measured by PISA, as well as on how equity gaps are affected by students’ schooling experiences.
Understanding equity within education systems requires education leaders and policy makers to know whether their systems
Ameliorate the effects of disadvantage?
Continue existing inequities?
Exacerbate the disadvantages that young children face?
← 1. Children’s levels of emergent literacy, emergent numeracy, working memory and mental flexibility were assessed directly. Social-emotional skills were assessed via teacher reports.
← 2. Emergent literacy refers to children’s oral language skills, i.e. their abilities to understand spoken language and to express themselves. No reading or writing is assessed in IELS.