W6, 14/11/22

Prof. Ted Melhuish & Dr. Julian Gardiner, Dept. of Education, Oxford

Differential effects on child development of early childhood education for disadvantaged groups.

The SEED study follows 4000 children in England from birth through their early years, including extensive data on the families and the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) they used. At the start of school there are measures of cognitive and socio-emotional development. Cognitive development was assessed using two British Ability Scales (BAS) verbal ability (“naming vocabulary”) and non-verbal ability (“picture similarities”) tests. Socio-emotional development was assessed using the Children’s Social Behaviour Questionnaire (CSBQ) (Howard and Melhuish, 2017). This produces measures of: Sociability (e.g. child has friends, plays with other children); Externalising behaviour (e.g. child loses temper, argues with other children); Internalising behaviour (e.g. child is easily upset, anxious); Prosocial behaviour (e.g. child is co-operative, helpful, shares things); Behavioural self-regulation (e.g. child follows instructions, waits their turn); Cognitive self-regulation (e.g. child choses their own tasks, persists with tasks), and; Emotional self-regulation (e.g. child is calm, keeps temper). Using multivariate analyses controlling for demographic and family factors, we look at the differential impact of Early Childhood Education & Care (ECEC) upon children from disadvantaged and advantaged families at the start of school.

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