The iPIPS project is an international study of children starting school around the world and the progress that they make in their first year at school. It is based on the Performance Indicators in Primary Schools (PIPS) baseline which has been used with about 3 million children and translated into more than a dozen languages.
The talk will set out the large range of key cognitive and non-cognitive skills exhibited by children on entry to school and the great progress that they usually make during grade 1. It will reflect on the different educational systems found across the world, the differing approaches to education and discuss the challenge of making comparisons across cultures. Finally, some of the progress which has been made in overcoming technical, cultural and psychometric challenges will be outlined.