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SEED Sponsored Research: Children
starting school in Scotland
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Introduction
What is the range of cognitive development of children
in Scotland when they start school? This report describes
what children know and can do when starting school and
records how much this varies according to gender, home
background, pre-school experience and first language. The
developmental stages of children starting school in
Scotland are compared with children in England, Western
Australia and New Zealand. The final part to the report
investigates the question: is there an optimum age for
starting school in Scotland?
The data for this report come from the Performance
Indicators in Primary Schools (PIPS) Project, which is very
widely used within Scotland. Children are assessed with the
computerised PIPS On-entry Baseline Assessment when they
first enter school. This assessment is currently used in a
third of Authorities within Scotland, providing a
widespread measure of cognitive development on-entry to
school. The schools whose data were used for this report
were shown to be representative of the whole of Scotland.
This report concentrates on the cognitive part of the
assessment where the data are known to be extremely
reliable. The internal consistency measures are high and
also when we compare the scores of children that are first
assessed by the teacher with a re-assessment a few weeks
later conducted by an independent researcher we get very
similar answers. In fact, the re-test reliability has been
estimated to be 0.98, which exceeds most assessments used
in schools. The assessment also involves personal and
social development and, at the end of the year, the
teachers assess behaviour but these measures were not
studied as part of the research.
What do children know and what can they do when
they start school in Scotland?
The cognitive part of the PIPS On-entry Baseline
Assessment includes early predictors of reading,
phonological awareness, maths and vocabulary. The analysis
of the scaled scores indicated, unsurprisingly perhaps,
that there was enormous variation in the age of children
starting school in Scotland. In the middle of the sample
were children who could name a wide range of upper and
lower case letters. They could repeat polysyllabic nonsense
words, demonstrating a degree of phonological awareness.
Typically, they could name all single digit numbers and
work out informally presented sums such as 6 - 3 and 3 + 2.
Their vocabulary was extensive and allowed them to identify
objects such as a toadstool. However, there was
considerable variation within the general pattern and this
is described below.
At the lower end: Children at the lower
end of this range could do very few of the activities
described above. In fact, their early reading development
simply stretched to being able to tell the difference
between someone who is reading and someone who is writing.
They could distinguish between the biggest and smallest in
a group, and the extent of their vocabulary enabled them to
identify objects like carrots, a castle and a
butterfly.
Exceptional starters: At the top end of
the range were a small proportion of exceptional children
able to read passages with difficult words in them like
'everyone' and 'thought' and to do formal sums such as 42 -
17 or identify a three-digit number such as 396. Their
vocabulary was extensive and they were typically able to
identify objects such as a yacht and a microscope.
A much fuller description of the cognitive levels of
children starting school is available in the full
report.
Gender: We found that girls were slightly
ahead of boys in early reading and phonics and vocabulary
but not at all in maths. However, despite the differences
between the mean scores of the two groups (which indicated
a tiny advantage to girls in word-based assessments) the
main feature of the data was the enormous variation within
each group.
Homes: In terms of home background it has
long been known that children from poorer backgrounds tend
to do less well at school. This report used the measure of
free school meals as an indicator of home background and
the data clearly demonstrate that children from poorer
backgrounds are falling behind their peers from more
affluent neighbourhoods before they reach school. Their
disadvantage is quite noticeable but does not indicate that
their future is determined solely by affluence or
background. There are certainly children from more deprived
neighbourhoods who start off at a very high level and do
extremely well later on, and vice versa. There are also
children who forge ahead despite an unpromising start and
the opposite can also happen.
Age: The average age when children started
school was 5 years and 1 month but some children were as
much as 6 months older than that and some 6 months younger.
A year's growth around the age of 5 has a marked impact on
a child's cognitive development and it is not surprising
that we found this had a clear link to age.
Pre-school: Little connection was found
between the amount of pre-school experience and children's
starting points at school. Perhaps this was because most
children had spent a considerable period in a pre-school
setting but that does not appear to be the full
explanation. It may be that a study of children's
experience of pre-school could provide a better
explanation.
The figure below gives an indication of the extent of
the differences associated with gender, home background,
etc.
Figure 1: Distribution of mathematics levels
together with average scores for sub-groups
The figure demonstrates that there was no difference
between girls and boys in their average starting points for
mathematics but older children and those from more affluent
homes (children who did not receive free school meals) had
higher starting points. Although it is not shown on the
chart, the amount of pre-school experience was positively
related to the starting point in mathematics, but to a very
small extent.
Important though age and home background were, they were
small in comparison to the very large differences between
pupils more generally. Similar results were found for
vocabulary, reading and phonics. There was a very weak
relationship found between the amount of pre-school
experience and the PIPS scores at the start of Primary
1.
How do the starting points of children in
Scotland compare with other countries?
The PIPS project collects a large amount of data from
children in England, New Zealand and Western Australia as
well as from Scotland. We know that the English and
Scottish data are representative but we are not so sure
about the representativeness of the Western Australian and
New Zealand data. In order to make as fair a comparison as
possible the analysis was restricted to children whose
first language was English.
Firstly, the relative difficulties of all the items that
were used in the baseline assessment in the different
countries were compared. We did not have good enough data
on the items in the phonics section to compare the
different countries but we did for vocabulary, maths and
early reading. We found remarkable agreement between the
difficulties of the assessment items across the different
countries. In general, those items that were difficult in
Western Australia were difficult in New Zealand; those that
were easy in England were easy in Scotland and so on.
Next, the levels of development of pupils in Scotland
were compared with pupils in other countries. Age for age,
we found almost identical relationships between the
different groups. In early mathematics we saw considerable
similarities. However the mathematics development of older
children starting school in Scotland, those aged 5 and a
quarter to 5 and a half, appeared to be a little behind
those in Western Australia of similar ages. For reading,
the children in Scotland were generally a little behind
those in other countries age for age except for those who
were just 4 and a half years old. Those in New Zealand were
considerably ahead and so the data were analysed further by
breaking down the assessment into different parts. After
taking age into account, pupils in Scotland could identify
considerably fewer letters of the alphabet and had lower
scores on the 'Concepts About Print' section of the
assessment than pupils from other countries but the
proportion of unusual children who were already reading
sentences and doing other work was just the same as
elsewhere. Similarly, the proportion of exceptional
Scottish pupils who were able to tackle the more difficult
mathematics items was the same as other countries. We do
not offer an explanation for these findings, but we do call
for urgent further investigations.
What is the optimum age for starting
school?
In order to look for an optimal age for starting school
we linked the PIPS On-entry data to later PIPS assessments
of mathematics, reading, non-verbal ability and vocabulary
administered when the children had reached Primary 3. These
longitudinal data were available for pupils from one
complete Scottish Authority. The Primary 3 PIPS assessment
also included a measure of children's attitudes to maths,
reading and school.
The age profile: The first point to come
out of the analysis is that whilst we might expect the
children in P3 to be of a single age, that is to say within
half a year of the average age, there are clearly a small
number of children who are old for the age group and also a
small number who are young for the age group. It seems that
some have been kept behind or pushed forward or sent to
school a bit late or early.
Attainment linked to age: We looked at the
age of the children against their achievement levels and
found, not surprisingly, that in general the older the
child the better their performance. As an exception to that
generalisation we did find that some of the children who
were old for P3 tended to be doing rather less well,
corresponding to a view that they were deliberately kept
back a year.
Optimum age? Overall, when we looked at
the progress of the children starting from entry in the
beginning of P1 to the end of P3 we found no evidence at
all that there was an optimum age for starting school. Nor
indeed did we find that the younger children or the older
children did unusually well in terms of progress made. We
tried to examine the data in a variety of different ways
and from different angles using multilevel models but
failed to find any trend. We also found no connection
between the age of the child and the attitude of the child
in the year group. This left us in a position where we must
conclude that there was no evidence for an optimum age for
starting school in Scotland. Some might argue on the basis
of this that we might send children to school when they are
a little bit older but the evidence does not suggest this
policy. This is because we were simply looking at the
relative success of the children who were
older or younger within that year group. It does not say
that more years of schooling would not be good or harmful,
it says that within a year group there is not an age
advantage, that the younger children are not falling by the
wayside compared to their older peers and so on.
In summary: The age of starting school is
a contentious issue and this report has thrown some light
on the matter, which does not suggest any need for a change
in present arrangements. If Scotland were to consider
changing its policy in this vital area, then we would
recommend an evidenced based approach, with different pilot
projects being introduced in a controlled fashion in
different parts of Scotland. This would be a world first
and could parallel the enormously important work from
Tennessee on class size.
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