Enrolment in the first stage of early childhood education and students’ academic performance: a cross-country analysis

ABSTRACT

Parents have the option of enrolling their children in the first stage of early childhood education (from 0 to 3 years of age). However, not all parents decide to do so, waiting until the second stage of early childhood education to enrol them in the education system (from 3 to 5 years of age), or even until compulsory education when their children are around 6. We intend to analyse the influence of students’ enrolment in the first stage of early childhood education on their fourth-grade reading scores. This analysis has been performed using data from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2011 and 2016 for 39 countries and an instrumental variable approach to go beyond simple correlation. We find that attending the first stage of early childhood education has a positive influence on students’ reading scores in 18 countries, whereas it presents a null influence in 16 countries.

KEYWORDS:

• First stage of early childhood education
• instrumental variables
• fourth grade
• reading

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 “Exhibit 2: Grade Assessed and Average Age of the Students Assessed in PIRLS 2016” indicates starting ages for compulsory education: https://pirls2016.org/wp-content/uploads/structure/PIRLS/0.-about-pirls-2016/0_2_grade-assessed-and-average-age.pdf

2 ISCED stands for International Standard Classification of Education, which is the reference of international classification for organising education programmes and related qualifications by levels and fields. According to this classification, these levels are early childhood education (ISCED 0), primary education (ISCED 1), lower secondary education (ISCED 2), upper secondary education (ISCED 3), post-secondary non-tertiary education (ISCED 4), short-cycle tertiary education (ISCED 5), bachelor’s or equivalent level (ISCED 6), master’s or equivalent level (ISCED 7), and doctoral or equivalent level (ISCED 8).

3 Data from PIRLS 2021 have not been employed in order to avoid the influence of the COVID pandemic on the results.

4 These 39 countries are: Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, French-speaking Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chinese Taipei, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Hungary, Islamic Republic of Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Morocco, Oman, Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United Arab Emirates.

5 These scores have been standardised using the mean and standard deviation of the population to have mean 0 and standard deviation 1 so results can be interpreted as effect sizes, which makes international comparisons easier.

6 Father’s occupation in fourth grade has also been employed as an instrument in a robustness check, finding that it does not follow the relevance condition. The reason for this result may be that care work is usually performed by the mother, as previously indicated. These estimations will be provided upon request to the authors.

7 In spite of the high costs, it is striking that enrolment in the FSECE in French-speaking Belgium and France is pretty high (according to Appendix 1, 77% and 60% of children are enrolled in this stage of education, respectively), whereas this percentage was lower in Canada (26.05%), Ireland (22.9%), and Northern Ireland (4.86%). Interestingly, these figures are also reflected in the percentage of students whose mothers never worked for pay and who were enrolled in the FSECE in our database (66% in French-speaking Belgium, 48% in France, 21% in Ireland, 20% in Canada, and 3% in Northern Ireland), showing a clear difference between French-speaking Belgium and France, on the one hand, and Canada, Ireland, and Northern Ireland, on the other hand, that is, in spite of the high costs, even mothers who never worked before can afford it. The most likely explanation is that in both French-speaking Belgium and France the FSECE is a free or low-cost public service, as indicated in OECD (2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work has been partly supported by FEDER funding (under Research Project PY20-00228, Junta de Andalucía); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (under Research Project PID2020-119471RB-I00); by the Andalusian Regional Government (SEJ-645); the Universidad de Málaga (under Research Project B1-2022_23); and the Fundación Ramón Areces.

Notes on contributors

Luis Alejandro Lopez-Agudo

Luis Alejandro Lopez-Agudo is an associate professor at the Departamento de Economía Aplicada (Estadística y Econometría), Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad de Málaga (España). He holds a degree in Business Administration and Management and a degree in Economics, both by the University of Malaga. He has also finished a MSc of Research in Economics and a PhD in Economics and Business. He has published more than 50 papers, and his research interests are focused on economics of education: the study of education production functions, students’ behaviour and education effectiveness and efficiency, with specific emphasis on the gender and equality areas.

Oscar David Marcenaro-Gutierrez

Oscar David Marcenaro-Gutierrez is a professor at the Departamento de Economía Aplicada (Estadística y Econometría), Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y Empresariales, Universidad de Málaga (España). He moved to the University of Malaga after working 3 years at the London School of Economics. He has been working on projects focused on economics of education and labour market. His research interests specially include education production functions, efficiency, time use, teachers’ satisfaction, and students’ behaviour. He has published more than 80 papers, many of them in journals with high impact index.